I hear of a new bijou tea plantation and more hipster-ish cafés, but any concerns that Cowal is becoming more Shoreditch than rural Scotland are trod underfoot by the newly expanded Cowal Way. Piggybacking on the renown of the famous loch, it’s now the Loch Lomond and Cowal Way. It cuts 57 miles through the wild and wildly beautiful peninsula. Galleries and biscotti are eschewed for the elemental pleasures of battling through thick forest, hiking up rugged knolls and plunging down steep glens. 

I spend a morning tackling a coastal stretch up to the top of the Kyles of Bute – easily one of the most scenic places in Scotland, and I don’t say that lightly having spent two decades travelling around my nation. It’s a lung-filling, spirit-soaring pleasure. It puts me in the mood for more coffee. And cake. I push on east, bypassing Dunoon, Cowal’s only town. It’s the home of the superb Argyll Smokery and apparently a favourite of Damon Albarn, inspiring his song ‘Selfish Giant’. It’s also my mum’s birthplace. 

I suspect that both of these hallowed figures would forgive me for dissing Dunoon if they took a table at the brilliantly refashioned The Blairmore, a trim pier-side gallery and café just to the east on Loch Long, with homebaked cakes, local art and ultra-local produce. As I sit with my imagined mother and a Britpop star the scene gets even more surreal as she joins us, barrelling into life. A real-life time machine that is. The PS Waverley, the world’s last ocean going paddle steamer. The Waverley is back; right here gleaming in black and white topped with those unmistakable scarlet-red funnels.

The Waverley’s paddles churn up the aquarium clear waters, her well-oiled (recently overhauled) engines transport me back to the accordion-fuelled feverish days of the Glasgow Fair holidays. Today the Waverley is once again helping those looking to escape; a metal hulled, steam-powered ark. In an instant old and new combine in this oasis of ghosts and re-imagined arks, of reborn industrial white elephants and farms-cum-art galleries. The hills look less brooding now; the mist is clearing. Cowal may not for long remain Scotland’s forgotten peninsula.

The details

Loch Lomond Sea Planes: lochlomondseaplanes.com; Portavadie: portavadie.com, rooms from £129; Tourist information: wildaboutargyll.co.uk. Read more: Telegraph Travel’s guide to the best hotels in Scotland.