Tarbert

Node what you don't know!!!!!

Scots Gaelic place name given to many Scottish portage points ("tairbeart" meaning "isthmus" or "peninsula").   Western Scotland and the Hebrides are full of places where two mountainous areas come together and touch, with two fjords in between that don't quite meet up in the middle.

A low, narrow bit of land connects the two mountains, just the thing for dragging a Viking longship across for a nifty shortcut.  Towns and castles have grown up in many of these strategic places, invariably called "Tarbert" (T on the map).  The fjords (both of them) are called "Loch Tarbert".
 
 
           /                        /
          /      Beinn na ceud     |
         |                        /
   West  |                       /
  Loch   \________       _______/   East
Tarbert->  _______)  T  (______ <-Loch
          /                    \   Tarbert
         |    Beinn na dara     \
         /                      /
        /                      /

In my handy little Routemaster Road Atlas of Great Britain,  I spot at least five of the things:

• connecting Harris to South Harris
• connecting the northern and southern halves of Jura
• Glen Tarbert connecting the head of Loch Sunart to Loch Linnhe
• Tarbet connecting Loch Long to Loch Lomond
• Connecting Kintyre to the Scottish mainland, providing a shortcut from the Atlantic into Loch Fyne and thence to the Firth of Forth.

The last Tarbert is the scene of Robert the Bruce's portage of a galley to undo the ghost of King Magnus of Norway's 1098 conquest of Kintyre via a similar feat.

Sources:
The aforementioned atlas
http://www.mallaigheritage.org.uk/galley.htm