Graham's the Grocers, an independent shop in a village of roughly 800 people, has been described as "a gem of a village shop, catering for both good value and organic, and specialist diets." The post office and general store on Main Street handles the rest, stocking everything from newspapers, gifts and cards to fishing nets. Robin's Nest Tearoom does home-made fare Thursday to Sunday.
There are two places to drink. The Taynuilt Inn sits on the A85 where it runs through the village, doing food Wednesday to Sunday and closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The menu takes in haggis and black pudding starters, a wood-fired grilled burger and Sunday roasts, the last of which reviewers single out. Staff are repeatedly called brilliant, attentive and friendly. Dogs are welcome in the bar and get water bowls and biscuits. There are no letting rooms, and one reviewer noted the cheeseburger costs £20.
The Taynuilt Hotel Village Bar is the other watering hole, "a snug venue frequented by locals" and the place for a wee dram. Buses pick up and drop off outside it on the main road.
Between the village and Loch Awe, Inverawe Smokehouses cures salmon and trout over real oak — hand-salted, rested, gently smoked. It's a trade Robert Campbell-Preston learned growing up on the banks of the Awe before he and Rosie opened the smokehouse in 1980, and it holds a Royal Warrant. In late 2024 the operating company faced a winding-up petition, so it's worth checking it's open before you make the trip.
The village is largely grey stone, sitting where the A85 comes down from the Pass of Brander to the south shore of Loch Etive. Ben Cruachan, the Hollow Mountain, rises to the north — 1,126 metres, with hillwalking access from the Falls of Cruachan side. Just south, Glen Nant National Nature Reserve has a waymarked circuit called the Coalers' Trail, running through oakwoods that once fed charcoal to an ironworks.
That ironworks was Bonawe, established in 1753 and now the most complete charcoal-fired ironworks in Britain. In 1781 alone it cast 42,000 cannonballs, from three-pounders up to thirty-two. It ran for 123 years before closing in 1876.
The furnace also produced the first monument to Nelson in Britain. Its workmen raised a granite standing stone on a knoll east of the village on Christmas Day 1805, about six weeks after news of Trafalgar reached the area and before Nelson's body had reached the country at all. The stone is very probably prehistoric — it had been lying in a field a mile to the northwest, and the workmen dragged it up.
East of here, in the narrow Pass of Brander, Robert the Bruce broke the MacDougalls of Argyll in 1308 after Sir James Douglas climbed above the ambush and sprang it from higher up the slope.
The station is at the north end of the main street, on the Oban branch of the West Highland Line; Oban is about 24 minutes west, or twelve miles by the A85. Karen Matheson and Donald Shaw of the folk band Capercaillie are both from here.
The Highland Games take over the sports field each July, and the village keeps its own shinty club.
