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1
"VIRTUAL TOURS"
ofTHE KINTYRE WAYandWEST COAST MOTORS'KINTYRE BUS SERVICESinGOOGLE EARTH
IMPORTANTLY
,
the links here may provide a 'quick visual reference' for anyone in the area's emergencyservices who might be called out on to the remote and unfamiliar areas of Kintyre's hills
.
 
2Though listed in the links of both the official
Kintyre Way
and the wonderfully expansive
Internet Guide ToScotland
websites, it is unlikely that many, apart from walking enthusiasts themselves, would ever think of looking atthe pages of a website called
Walk Highlands
, which is seemingly run from the island of Skye, the well constructedpages including links to
Google Earth
'
virtual tours
'
of the whole length of The Kintyre Way
, an 'armchair guide'for those who, perhaps because of personal infirmity or disability, may never be able to undertake the route and anessential 'preview guide' for those who would do their 'homework' before attempting the routes and, to use these links,
one MUST have previously installed theGoogle Earthprogram
.
ABOUT GOOGLE EARTH
Over 60 mb in size
, the
drawbacks of the Google Earth program
are that it may take a long time to download andinstall, not least for those using a dial-up, rather than a broadband, connection and similarly, the performance of theprogram may well depend on both the type of interconnection and the speed of the computer being used.Anyone using Google Earth for the first time, should note that the
Tools
 / 
Options
 / 
3D Viewmenu
should checkthat the
Texture Colors
are at
32-bit True Color
and note there too that the
Elevation
settings can be changed from
Feet and Miles
to
Meters and Kilometers
and the drop-down
View menu
will let you add or remove a
Latitude
 / 
Longitude Grid
and too, in the drop-down
View menu
, go to "
Show Navigation
" and 'click' on"
Automatically
" to ensure that the
three controls
always appear at the top right of the Google Earth screen.The
TOP one pans you left or right AND TILTS
the map too, the
MIDDLE one is simply the directional N-E-W-S
control and the
BOTTOM one is essentially an "ALTITUDE
" control that lets you cover the ground andThe Earth quickly, simply hold down the left button of your mouse and zoom the "slider" up and down
ABOUT THE 'WALK HIGHLANDS' VIRTUAL TOUR FILES
Following the links below to access any one of the
seven Kintyre Way route sections
and then scrolling down to"
View in 3D
", '
right-click
' the mouse on "
View this walk in Google Earth
" and "
Save Target as . . .
" and savethe "
kintyre-way.kmz
" file to "
My Documents
" and then '
double click
' the file to open it in
Google Earth
, whereit will appear, on the left, in "
Places
" and under the sub-heading "
Temporary Places
" - Highlight the "
kintyre-way.kmz
" file and, again, '
right-click
' the mouse on the file and then "
Save to My Places
".
If one simply highlights the file
and clicks the "
Play Tour
" button, to the right of the slider control, below the"
Places
" box of files and the 'virtual tour' of
the whole Kintyre Way
will begin, another set of controls, to stop andrestart the tour will also appear and fade out till requested at the bottom left of the map screen.The 'tour', when opened in this fashion, begins with a short, high-speed, less than 2-minute long 'overview' of thewhole route and, using the controls described above, one can easily pause the 'tour' and have a look around the areaand, if one allows the near 90-mile long 'tour' to run in its entirety and travelling at around some 80 mph, one willreach Dunaverty, at the south end of Kintyre, in a little less than 70-minutes !The file can now be '
double clicked
' and will open in the "
Places
" box on the left to reveal
ALL
the various
KintyreWay route sections
.
Scroll down towards the bottom of
the opened list of files and one will come to 'virtual tour' files - '
Double Click
'any file of interest and Google Earth will move on to the starting point of that route section.As the tour runs, one will see the
'Compass'control
, at the top right of the map screen and you can temporarilyrotate or pan the view through a full 360º or tilt the view, to see the horizons, if you 'left-click' and hold down one ofthe arrows
insidethe
'
Compass
'
control
, the tour almost immediately reverting to its original course.
Walk Highlands 'Virtual Tour' of The Kintyre Way
Going to any of
The Kintyre Way
'
virtual tour
'
page links
below, you will then find links to the correspondingOrdnance Survey maps, GPS 'waypoint' downloads and of course, the 'virtual tours', the basics explained in theforegoing.Also, on these page links, scrolling down, you will find route descriptions with information about some of themarkers, photographs and, importantly, 'route profile elevations', these plotting the rise and fall of each route from
 
3end to end and giving the heights in metres and the distances in kilometres -
To convert metres to feet
: multiplythe number of metres by 3.28084 and,
To convert kilometres to miles
: multiply the number of kilometres by0.62137.[
The timings in brackets indicate the running time of each individual section's 'virtual tour'
]
Stage 1 :Tarbert to Skipness
15.25 km 9.5 miles
[ 7 min 29 secs]
Stage 2 :Skipness to Clachan
20.00 km12.5 miles
[11 min 43 secs]
Stage 3 :Clachan to Tayinloan
15.00 km 9.25 miles
[ 4 min 53 secs]
Stage 4 :Tayinloan to Carradale
23.75 km14.75 miles
[11 min 16 secs]
Stage 5 :Carradale to Campbeltown
32.00 km20.00 miles
[16 min 26 secs]
Stage 6 :Campbeltown to Machrihanish
8.75 km 5.25 miles
[ 2 min 39 secs]
Stage 7 :Machrihanish to Dunaverty
29.00 km18.00 miles
[13 min 45 secs]
Total 'Virtual Tour' Length 153.75 km89.25 miles
[68 min 11 secs
 
]
MORE WAY - THE OLD WAY
To gain a further insight into
The Kintyre Way
and
Kintyre
, it is recommended that you also read the "
Kintyre Way- Kintyre and The Drove Roads - A Pictorial Overview
" which 'hyperlinks' its references to the photographs onthe Ordnance Survey sponsored "
Geograph
" website.Note that, whereas the "
Geograph
" website links are based on Britain's
6-figure
'
National
'
Grid Reference System
,
Google Earthmaps
position everything by
Latitude and Longitude
.
Click here if you would like to convert 6-figure Grid References to Latitude and Longitude online
DOWNLOAD AN EVEN SIMPLER - TO - USE"LITE" EDITION OF GOOGLE EARTH
If you already have
, or have now downloaded and installed the
Google Earth
program, you can now also follow
TheKintyre Way
and indeed
EXPLORE THE WHOLE WORLD
by means of another very plain, no frillsversion of, Google Earth if you again go to any of the Kintyre Way 'virtual tour' page links and, again, scrolling downto "
View in 3D
", '
right-click
' the mouse on "
Open Virtual Highlands on this walk
" and "
Save Target as . . .
"and save the "
virtual.htm
" file to "
Desktop
" (where you might keep the link for its quick use) and then copy it fromthere to "
My Documents
" and then '
double click
' the file to open it, this time the page rather simply opening, asthis is an 'htm' file, in your
Internet Browser
i.e. Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox or whatever.
Once opened
,
IGNORE all the text stuff and SCROLL DOWN
to the bottom of the page until you come to "
onVirtual Highlands
" and, below that, at the bottom of the page, a "
lite
" version of
Google Earth
.On the plus side, there are only and
simply the three navigational control buttons
, described above and, as aconsequence, the page will load very quickly, especially if the link is left on the "Desktop" and does not have to behunted out in "My Documents" !On the negative side, there is no search box and no means of looking for place names or means of adding Latitude / Longitude grids etc. BUT, the very simplicity of it all encourages one to explore The World AND, The Kintyre Waypaths and tracks are also immediately highlighted when the page opens.
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