Dunoon Squadron 14 during the Cold War. The Cowal Highland Gathering attracts contestants and spectators from all over the world. It is held annually over the final weekend in August at Dunoon Stadium. Cowal Open Studios, held over a fortnight in September, gives the opportunity to visit the studios of artists around Dunoon and Cowal. Cowalfest, celebrates the outdoors activities like rambling around Dunoon for ten days in October. Since the 1930s Dunoon has hosted the Royal National Mòd a number of times - 1930, 1950, 1968, 1994, 2000, 2006 and 2012. In 2013, the first Dunoon Film Festival was held
Cowal the Kilfinan peninsula, and on the east, the Toward peninsula, which is also isolated from the north of Cowal, by the Holy Loch. The small central peninsula is divided from the Kilfinan peninsula by Loch riddon, and the interjection of Bute, and its Kyles. Cowal's underlying geology is made up largely of resistant metamorphic rocks, but south of the Highland Boundary Fault part of the Toward peninsula is composed of sedimentary rocks. The landscape is mountainous, the high ground dominated by moorland, peat mosses and the forest that often extends down the sides of the sea lochs to the water's