Dunoon is the main town of Cowal, a Victorian seaside resort that boomed when Glasgow steamers brought day-trippers “doon the watter”. You still arrive by boat: passenger and car ferries run across from Gourock on the Clyde. There’s a long promenade, the hilltop Castle House Museum and the statue of Robert Burns’s Highland Mary looking out over the firth. A handy base for exploring the wider Cowal peninsula.
