Bee swarm in Oban? Help is a minute away.

Oban is the main hub of Argyll and the principal ferry port for CalMac routes to Mull, Islay, Colonsay and the outer islands. The town is set in a horseshoe bay at the foot of hills thick with gorse, heather and sycamore, and the Battery Hill above the town centre carries gorse, wild thyme and bell heather looking down over the bay to Kerrera island. The sheltered garden slopes of the residential streets have established rhododendron and mixed shrub planting. Sycamore is abundant in the sheltered glens approaching Dunstaffnage and Glen Lonan to the east, and bramble thrives on the woodland margins through August.

Heather is the defining flow of Argyll — Calluna vulgaris covers the hills, glens and island moors from late July into September, offering one of the longest heather seasons in Scotland. Gorse and broom flower in two flushes — April and again in late summer — on every rocky coastal headland and glen-side. Sycamore is the principal woodland forage tree, prolific in the sheltered sea-loch valleys and estate policies from late April. Bramble is abundant on the lower ground and forest clearings from July. White clover grows on the improved coastal grassland of the Kintyre plain, the Isle of Bute and the Oban hinterland. Cross-leaved heath in the wetter blanket bogs supplements the main heather flow on the islands.