A major Argyll road that has been blocked since a landslide last Thursday reopened at around 6pm last night.
Diversions have been in place while recovery work on the A83 Tarbert to Campbeltown route at the Rest and Be Thankful mountain pass was delayed by bad weather.
Poor conditions severely hampered work by a crew of engineers and specialist subcontractors, who needed access to the hillside to assess the risk of loose material and make any boulders safe.
But the weather improved yesterday and they were able to complete the work needed to reopen the road.
A spokeswoman for trunk road agency BEAR Scotland said work was able to continue on the destruction and stabilisation of boulders high on the hillside in the area of the recent landslide.
She said: “At the start of the day, progress was hampered by the lack of visibility due to low cloud however this cleared and weather conditions were good.”
She explained that the agency’s two geotechnical engineers and eight geotechnical contractor’s staff were all on the hillside assessing and dealing with each boulder, progressively working down the slope to ensure safe working conditions.
And she stressed that the work was timed to minimise any impact on the Old Military Road local diversion route convoys which continued to operate throughout the day.
Last night, the spokeswoman said: “Following good progress on the hillside today our geotechnical engineers are satisfied that the dangerous boulders have now been made safe.”
She added that traffic signals would remain in place for a several weeks while the next stage of debris fencing was installed.
When the local diversion along the Old Military Road was not available, motorists faced a 60-mile diversion via the A82 Glasgow to Inverness road. Transport Minister Keith Brown visited the Rest and Be Thankful on Sunday and was flown over the site in a helicopter so he could see the recovery work being carried out to get the A83 fully operational again.
He stressed that everything was being done to reopen the road as quickly as possible to ensure Argyll stayed open for business.