Mon - The Curse of Arran

OK this is getting stupid, we may have to run to England to escape the curse we are currently under.

I'm getting ahead of myself again, first things first. It's time to move on from Muirkirk and after yesterday's unsuccessful Sunday lunch forage we decide to go to a town known for its food, Castle Douglas in Galloway, just west of Dumfries.

It's a pleasant, sunny drive down through the rural cattle land of Ayrshire. Despite being a Bank Holiday (we believe it is such in Scotland as well as England) we pass a local butcher advertising pies etc so have an excellent sausage roll for lunch. The road south is good too, a new surface much of the way and long straights. However we have picked the time where the local power company is laying cables beneath the road surface. Since the cables are just crossing the road not running parallel then the road works are short-lived but they seem to be doing this every couple of miles so we encounter several such breaks in our otherwise good run.

Rather than make a beeline for Castle Douglas we have more than enough time to drive through the Galloway National Forest towards Wigtown. The forest is a lovely drive, much like the New Forest. We are driving along part of the Galloway Red Kite trail. We fail to see one. This is also an area with Red Squirrels. We fail to see one. Finally we do see red, Red Deer, a first for us, at a Forestry feeding station (similar to the one at Bolderwood in the New Forest). An interesting drive too with lots of good bends. One was made far more interesting than need be by meeting a Merc traveling far, far faster than safe exiting a bend well on our side of the road. Oh well I suppose we know the van's brakes work. I may well have let it a wee swearie-word too!

So far the Curse Of Arran seems to have deserted us but then it starts! Wigtown is Scotland's book capital, a northern Hay-on-Wye. It is also the first large town we've stopped at that has public loos and we've been driving a while. The ladies are closed for repair but we could do with a coffee and I spot a Brew Dog bar just across the way. Oh, most excellent, several good, different craft beers to choose from. A half of something interesting would go down even better than a coffee and they will definitely have the now urgently needed toilet. Except for the fact that they don't open on a Monday. This is a pub, one of the few in Scotland that has interesting beer and it doesn't open on a Monday!!! But wait a paragraph or so, gentle reader, and discover how the curse really hits home.

Wigtown's book shops doesn't seem like bookshops. Many seem like houses with books in, some like cafes with books in. One smallish looking shop advertises itself as Scotland's largest bookshop. On inside this tardis there are a lot more rooms than we expected and a lot of books. We didn't buy any!

Castle Douglas is Scotland's food town. I know this because it says so on its website. It is certainly home to Sulwath Brewery, still going strong after 20 years it is one of the UK's most venerable micro-breweries. So the plan tonight is, park up, leave the van just after 6, a couple of pints at the Sulwath Brewery Bar and then some nice local produce at some small restaurant. Ah but, The Curse Of Arran [ cue suitable "dun dun dooon music"]. Sulwath Brewery does have a bar, it is open on a Monday. But it shuts at 6pm - hopefully no local magistrates are reading this but the owner took pity on us and sold us a half, to share.

Still we can find a nice restaurant [sinister music plays once again]. Not really, there is an Indian, a Greek and a Chinese but apart from the local fish and chip shop nothing selling such rare delicacies as local fish or farm produce. We stop in one of the many hotels, standard pub fare with sub-standard liquid classed as beer. In desperation we try the Co-op or Tescos for a ready roasted chicken to take back to the van. Nope!

I have to admit depression has set in at this point. As the hunter/gatherer leader of our tribe I had failed to source Sunday lunch and now Monday was a washout. Was this the point where I walk out to a lonely place never to be heard from again? No, the Market Hotel seems to have reasonable food. Never mind the crap beer, we'll drink wine. It was actually quiet good and huge portions.

Back to the van and the last of the Aldi whisky.

Sun - ensuring harmony

Orkney was great, NW Scotland is a very special place, Mull was a disappointment although the weather didn't help, Islay was wonderful and as friendly a place as we've ever been too.

The universe needs to maintain a balance. We didn't like Arran and only seemed to meet it's less courteous citizens, and now here in Muirkirk we are having just an "OK time". Nothing bad, just nothing particularly to write home about (which, of course, makes life difficult for a blogger)

What do I mean? Well yesterday's trip to New Lanark was OK and it was fascinating to see the spinning mule in action but as far as we could see the only things that had changed in the 22 years since out previous visit were a new roof garden and improved café and shop! And the shop didn't have a single book on "King Cotton" or the industrial revolution, other than specific ones on New Lanark or Robert Owen.

Today we went to Culzean Castle an 18th century stately home for the Scottish Kennedy dynasty designed by Robert Adam. It's a nice house with huge gardens but, nothing stood out. There were no individual pieces of architecture, furniture or art that produced the "Wow!" response. Still the weather was nice and despite parts of the gardens being a little disappointing it was a pleasant enough few hours out.

It's Sunday and a nice Sunday dinner would be good, driving back towards Muirkirk in pleasant agricultural scenery it was soon obvious that we wouldn't stumbled across a wayside tavern offering a huge Sunday roast. The only largish town en route was Crummock but apart from Asda shops weren't just closed but shuttered against real or imaginary vandalism. Again the welcoming hostelry was both unlikely and undiscovered. A quick check of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and there's an inn in Sorn, good beer and a bit of a gastro-pub. Might be expensive but let's go, have a pint and take a look at the menu. Hmmm, a note to Ayrshire CAMRA is in order, no real ale. Being thirsty and Tennant's lager being the best choice (even the Guinness was ruined by being served through "extra-chilled" dispense) our mood was not inclined to peruse the menu. The Egon Ronay sticker on the door didn't help either, that alone probably bumps the food prices by 50% and reduces portion size by a similar figure. Oh well, dinner in the van.

You grumpy old git, surely the must be some redeeming points to the day. Well there were two. Firstly between Ayr and Culzean we drive through the "Electric Brae". I'd heard of this, possibly as a school kid but forgotten it was here. Basically if you stop on the road and release your hand brake you start to roll uphill. Actually if you stop on the main road you will almost certainly cause an accident so the council have provided a short length of layby to experiment with this phenomenon. Originally it was thought to be some strange magnetic anomaly or something, hence the " Electric " name. In fact the road runs very slightly downhill (1 in 86, so the information board says) but the surrounding hillsides trick the eyes and mind into thinking it is actually significant uphill. And yes it really is weird, you stop, you know which way is uphill but the car rolls that way for a couple of feet or so, a most bizarre illusion.

Secondly Muirkirk is just 3 miles away from the now non-existant village of Glenbuck. Non-existant, partly because this is an area in decline but more directly because open-cast mining has claimed most of the space where the village used to be. So why is Glenbuck famous? It was just a tiny village but for some reason produced many top-flight professional footballers; way, way more per capita than anywhere else in the world. The most famous of these, Bill Shankly, went on to be one of the most famous football managers of all time and the tiny 200m no through road that once would have been the village's main thoroughfare now terminates at a memorial to him.

This is a fairly run-down rural area but it has been the home to many a household name. As well as Bill Shankly and the other footballers of Glenbuck, Muirkirk itself was the home to John Loudon McAdam. Who? Well if I mention he had a foundry that melted tar would it help? In fact the road this campsite is on, foundry road used to lead to his workshop and was the very road on which he first experimented with tar and stones to create a durable road surface. My sister also tells me he invented the concept of a camber to allow water to drain off the surface of his new flat roads. Curiously Wikipedia tells me tarmacadam wasn't patented until 1901 (by Edgar Purnell Hooley) despite Muirkirk's claim to fame a century earlier.

Remember me mentioning Crummock - it's the birthplace of James Keir Hardie, leader of the labour party just before the first world war. 2 miles up the road is Auchinleck, home of James Boswell (the bloke wot wrote a about Sam Johnson). Considering this is middle of nowhere, rural Scotland it's amazing how many people came from here!

Sat - a discourse on cotton

Emily and Lucy may recall that 22 years ago, on the way to North Uist we stopped in at New Lanark, the mill village set up by Robert Owen in the early 1800s. Certainly walking down the steep slope from the car park with its panoramic views brought much of it back to us.

New Lanark is a cotton mill and it stills spins today, these days there is more money in spinning wool for home use and the craft weaving trade though. We end up buying a couple of balls, look out for interesting Willy hats when autumn comes around. The mill a fully working spinning mule which is very impressive to watch. This single large mule has 382 spindles, not only does it spin much. much faster than a single woman on a spinning wheel but it does the work of 382 of them! Incidentally, before the industrial revolution spinning by hand on a spinning wheel was mainly the work of women whereas hand weaving was mainly a male occupation. Should a women get married then maybe her husband earned enough for her to cease having to work and to become housewife and mother, those who remained unmarried we generally consigned to a lifetime of being a spinster.

Spinning is a complex operation and it must have been incredibly difficult to design machines to do it well. The earliest, Hargreaves' spinning jenny was hand operated but had the advantage of spinning 8 spools simultaneously and had a moving bar that would draw out the threads thus producing fairly fine yarn. Arkwright's water frame replaced the hand power with water and upped the spindle count but used rollers and didn't draw the thread as fine as the jenny. It was faster and produced good, but fairly thick yarn. Apparently Samuel Crompton accidentally stumbled upon a way to combine both different action machines into a single machine, two dissimilar beasts giving rise to one with the best qualities of both, hence the name spinning mule. It is impressed to watch the huge long bars move out drawing the fibres off the back roller and simultaneously spinning them, at about 3/4 way through this forward movement the back roller stops rotating and the thread is just stretched and twisted. Then the front bar moves swiftly back to meet the back bar during which time the cones on the front bar, onto which the yarn is wound, rotate to take up the newly spun slack and the process is ready to repeat.

Of course to be efficient the machines need to be stopped as little as possible. I shudder to imagine the injuries to the child "scavengers" employed to scamper between the moving rollers to tidy broken ends, clean accumulated cotton dross etc. Incredibly noisy, dusty, everything and everyone coated with the fine cotton lint, lungs included, machinery that lacked basic safety mechanisms and stopped for nothing, it must have been Hell.

One disappointment with New Lanark was the lack of context for the importance of the industrial revolution. Often we think of it in terms of steam but mills like New Lanark were essentially water powered, only using the costly steam power as a backup when water power was inadequate, such as times of drought. However it is spinning and weaving, particularly spinning that is the real heart of the industrial revolution. It's the huge mills that started the switch from rural to urban living and from agriculture to factory culture.

Without the revolution in textiles in the beginning of the 19th century there would have been no Manchester slums to provide Marx and Engels with the basis of the communist manifesto. Without the improvements in spinning making cotton preferable to wool there would have been no need for the US southern states to plant vast estates of cotton fields and no need to conscript slave labour from Africa, and so no impetus for the US Civil War, not the festering struggle for racial equality that has lingered ever since. Remember too, much of Gandhi's focus was on the right for Indians to produce home-spun cotton.

Today's homework question "The spinning mule and flying shuttle have had more impact upon human politics than any other of mankind's inventions" - Discuss.

New Lanark, of course, is of interest because Robert Owen was a social reformer who actively strove to improve the lot of the worker through education, leisure and shorter working hours. This was a time when huge fortunes were made through exploitation of the poor so New Lanark was a bold social experiment which appears to have between a huge success. Perhaps out of the choices of Hell, New Lanark was one of the better ones.

Lanark itself is not such a bold experiment and a fairly mundane town. Like so many Scottish lowland towns alcohol seems to be a problem. That said the homeward route was deliberately chosen to take us via the town of Strathaven which has a brewery (of the same name) and so we stopped at a local hotel to try a pint. One problem of this area and it's proximity to Glasgow is the impenetrability of the accent. You know that at least some of the words presented to you may possibly be ones included in the Queen's English but any attempt to parse the sound steam to determine which sets of phonemes may be familiar is impossible to anyone born south of the border. The only hope is to study the universal communication system of body language and nod/shake as you hope is the appropriate response.

We decide to give the singer down at the lounge bar on site here a miss. No real reason, the beer isn't something we would choose to drink and it sounds LOUD. We're getting old!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!

I've just spent well in excess of an hour writing part of today's blog when the Nexus tablet shut down on me because it ran out of power. No warning, no chance to save work. It was plugged into a 2A PSU at the time so goodness knows what background task was consuming power at a greater rate than I was stuffing in to it. Google's offline blogging app Blogger does not do timed backups nor seems to have an option to set such so my entire work was lost.

Blogging without internet is incredible fraught, the Android apps seem very poor. Having mains I suppose I should have delved into the van's lockers and found Liz's laptop.

Oh well, that's what I'll do now

Fri - A rant about Arran

Well we are eating cereal not porridge for breakfast! Actually at some stage after 10pm last night another van turned up and parked next to us.

The problem is, of course, bank holiday and school half term next week. We had assumed that planning would be easy whilst travelling but 3g and WiFi is such a rare luxury. Of course we can (and do) pop to pubs in the evening to use their WiFi but by then the batteries in our phones are so shot we don't have a lot of time to do the vital research. One thing we have learned this trip is that managing the technical resources when you don't have mains electricity or internet requires planning. One purchase already scheduled for when we get back is a large USB backup battery. Even then without electric we can only charge 2 devices overnight (i.e. both our phones) so any such additional device needs thinking about. Of course, parked up on a sunny day our handy, dandy new solar panel charger will be useful.

So, what's the plan for today? The regular reader, and I'm sure you all are, will recall we changed our ferry time and decided to leave Arran without really visiting it. So we have just this morning to discover the delights of Brodick. Firstly the Arran Brewery which I must admit has the best porcelain breweriana bits we've seen. A few years ago when such nice plates etc weren't considered "stuff" to clutter the house we might have been interested. So just 4 additional beers to augment the dwindling van stock. Actually it's the first bargain of the day since they had some nice German lagers just out of their sell by date at very half price or less - we just had to buy a couple of bottles.

Next the Arran Cheese shop which seemed more a tourist attraction than anything else. Later in the day we saw a flyer for "The Real Arran Cheese Company" so there are obviously branding wars going on, reminiscent of Popular Fronts in Judea.

Ok the tourist attractions done let's take a look at the local shops, Active Arran outdoor shop had some good clothing in at decent prices but not the heavier weight quarter zip fleece I've been looking for.

Next to the tourist information there is a little charity shop - bargains of the day #2. I picked up copy of the recently released DVD "Carol" for 50p (yes David, the old serendipity mojo works even up her) as well as another Ladies Of Letters CD and Liz picked up several wonderful knitting patterns for 10p each including a fantastic vintage Aran wool hat. Yes, that is correct, apparently Arran the island is spelled differently to Aran the wool!

Finally the Co-op where, to be brutally honest we really only went in because they had customer toilets. There on the shelf was one of the questing beasts I'd given up the search for - a Nook Simple Touch Light ereader. We love our Kindles, they are absolutely brilliant in the van. Liz has read about a dozen or so books this trip, even as paperbacks that would have been a lot of van space. However we decided we'd also get either a Nook or Kobo to augment the Kindle. Nook and Kobo can read books loaned from UK libraries, Kindles have a wealth of Amazon books and the Amazon 99p daily deal or even free books. Having both would be best of both worlds. Also we wanted to try an ereader with backlight to decide whether it would be worth upgrading the Kindles at anytime. I missed the cheap Nooks when Barnes and Noble were clearing them through Sainsburys et al, about 6 months ago but here was one on the Co-op shelf at a real bargain price. I tried to get two but alas...

So all was good in Brodick and our moods uplifted by these bargains? Not quite, it was still very cold and grey but more importantly was the demeanour of Arranians, particularly shopkeepers and last night's camp site owner. Apart from the final gentleman till operator in the Co-op most had been at best uncommunicative, some a little curt and in one case downright rude. Had I not really, really wanted the Nook I may well have told the cashier at the quick service desk where to stuff the ruddy thing after she brusquely informed me there was a queue. Firstly there wasn't when I approached the desk from the side and secondly I only wanted to ask her to call someone to confirm that despite empty boxes in the shelves there really wasn't any hope of a second one. I did try to explain this only to be met with "There's a queue!" once again.

If you are from Arran and reading this then may I suggest taking a holiday over in Islay where people know the meaning of the word "friendly"!

The boat was late leaving (and jam packed) so we couldn't even get off the place quickly. 50 minutes later we arrived across the water on the mainland at Ardrossan. First thing to be done is remove the jumper, the grey cloud and cold wind that so reflected the mood of Arran shop keepers had instantly been transformed into bright sunshine. Talk of omens!

It was weird being back in the mainland. Buildings, traffic, traffic control, and being late it was now past 5pm on a Friday, rush hour and traffic queues. For the past week or two a traffic hold up means slowing for sheep on the road.

Still the campsite seems OK. The main thing is that the owner was very friendly and helpful. We already have a couple of changes of plan for tomorrow based upon attractions she mentioned that we were unaware of. She's obviously not from Arran!

Thurs - No room at the inn

Ferry day today, two ferries to be precise, one to Bute/Kintyre, a quick drive across and a second ferry to Arran. We are up early - actually later than our original 7am alarm, set so we could phone Lucy on her birthday.

Plenty of time before the ferry so we pop in to Lagavulin to get a taste. We tasted two expressions, their standard 16 year old and their Distiller's Edition. The 16 year old is matured in bourbon casks for, well what do you expect, 16 years. Distiller's Edition is almost exactly the same but matured for 15 years, 9 months in bourbon and then a final 3-6 months in Pedro Jimenez  sherry casks. The difference is amazing. The 16 year old is much less peaty than its neighbours (Laphraoig and Ardbeg) and the extra age adds a little more refinement. For the Distiller's Edition those few months in sherry casks change the character completely, a much fuller mouth, sweetness masks much of the peat but still the long finish in which the peat starts to assert. Wonderful, amongst my favourites of all the whiskies I've ever drunk. The downside is it is £75 a bottle compared to £45 for the 16 year old. Amazing that changing casks for a few months can command such a price hike so I ask. Apparently the sherry market is in steep decline, casks are in very short supply. Some sherry makers make money out of filling casks, pouring the sherry away without selling it and the selling the empty casks to the whisky trade. Whereas once a sherry cask cost £50 they now can command up to £2000. So folks, if you like the odd sherry tipple or enjoy a good trifle then buy more sherry, then perhaps one day I can afford a bottle of Lagavulin Distiller's Edition.

The crossing to Bute is, as all the others, uneventful and smooth. It takes just under two and a half hours. Now the ferry lands at Kennacraig and it is a little over 5 miles across to the opposite side of the peninsula to Claonaig where the ferry to Arran departs from.

This is where the day starts to unravel! Rather than drive directly to Claonaig we decide to drive 5 miles north to the town of Tarbert for fuel, also because the Kintyre Service Station does LPG and will fill our Gaslow bottle. Ah, I said "does" there, present tense. What I meant was the past tense - "did". That's past tense with regard to LPG and to fuel as the garage has closed down. It's raining, the last mile the road has had its surface ripped off ready for retarmacing and is a horrible drive which we have to backtrack along. Once back at Kennacraig the road to Claonaig is single track and we run into the group of cycle tourists that were on the boat and who have now spread themselves over a two mile stretch meaning finding a passing place each time we encounter one of them. Pain! Still we get to the ferry with just a 40 minute wait. This ferry is not bookable, it's turn up and go on the next one, they run every 75 mins during the day. They just about squeeze us on with the van being too tall to fit under the side gallery I have to drive carefully inches away from it the length of the boat.

We don't see much of Arran on the 25 mile drive round from Lochranza to Brodick (the main town) and on to Lamlash where we plan to stay at Middleton campsite. It is raining fairly hard and despite the dual lane road having resizable service it twists its way round the mountains and had an advisable 30 mph speed limit which i don't exceed by much.

Middleton Campsite is completely full. We'd have been OK had we booked two or three weeks ago apparently. The owner didn't look amused when I said we hadn't planned what we were doing two or three days ago! I asked for thoughts on alternatives, knowing there was at least one other site a few miles away and one back at Lochranza. She suggested finding a lay-by; no mention of other sites, no offer to phone one for us or even look up their numbers so we could phone ourselves. I was distinctly unimpressed and the site goes on that very small list I will advise friends not to use.

Back to Brodick, we park up and it is lashing it down, too wet to even walk the 50m or so to the pub for a coffee (nothing stronger as we have no idea how much more driving the day will require). Now I've had decent phone signal all day (and I'm writing this less than I mile away where I've got good 3g). In this particular car park neither Liz not I had internet phone signal, despite being on different carriers. To make matters worse my WiFi kept picking up and connecting to a BT Fon signal but this was frustratingly weak enough to allow log in but no further access 

Grrrrr! We are on an island we've never visited before, it's lashing down with rain, we don't have a bed for the night and don't have any network connection to find one. Grrrr, indeed!

So we have decided that the fates don't want us on Arran so we drive to the ferry office and change our departure to tomorrow afternoon. I'm sorry shop keepers, restauranteurs and pub owners of Arran, none of my pension allocation will be coming your way. Blame the unhelpful owner of Middleton Campsite, Lamlash.

Actually the woman in the ferry office was much more helpful and suggested a car park in Brodick which is where we are. Parked up we did go to the local pub for dinner, if we get free camping then giving something back seems only fair. As we return a police car pulls out of the car park just before we get there. Nothing posted on our windscreen, let's hope they don't move us on in the night. The car park doesn't have any "No Overnighting" or "No Sleeping" signs but does say "Cars Only". Well the police know we're here, let's see what happens (the barman at the pub concurred with the ferry lady that we ought be OK).

I'll post the address where cakes with hidden files should be sent.

Wed - a party at a brewery, and they invited a distillery

Today is Islay Brewery's open day and the weather is set to be good so the plan is to sun ourselves and have the occasional pint whilst listening to the music.

For a complete change this holiday Liz has agreed to drive so this afternoon I can enjoy a pint out three. Mind you the plan is nearly scuppered at the offset. We so enjoyed Bruichladdich last Sunday that a bottle is the least we could do. Now, attentive readers will recall that they also do a gin - The Botanist. It's one of those 'exclusive' premium gins full of 'hand-foraged botanicals' which is just another way of saying expensive. I'd be tempted buy a bottle only if it is very much to my taste. So we pop into the distillery (what a lovely phrase that is 'pop into the distillery') and I ask if I could have a tasting. Normally this is a tiny taste in a wee plastic glass but this is Bruichladdich - healthy, at least full size measure in a really nice glass. This is nice gin too but before midday? Where is the sun in conjunction to the yardarm? OK, sold to that man as well as a bottle of there Classic Laddie whisky.

Two distilleries we've yet to visit Caol Ila and Bunnahabhain both down on isolated coves on the east side of the island. Caol Ila is owned by the big spirits group Diageo, and whilst blagging a taster we talk to the shop manager who is from Marchwood just a few miles from home. As well as a taster he persuades us to sign up for the Diageo whisky passport. This amazingly gives us to two complimentary nosing/tasting glasses, exactly the same glasses we paid for money for a couple of weeks ago so we could drink in the van. Nice, now we can invite guests to drink our whisky. I fear they may get accidentally damaged on the way home (We've been in the company of Scots for too long!)

Bunnahabhain is interesting, a 4 mile twisty drive down a single track road with not so many passing places. We are just about to pull in to the distillery as a laden wagonl wants to pull out so we park precariously close to the sea just outside to allow him to pass. This means we get to walk all through the distillery. It is a pretty desolated place. Forget the mash tuns and stills, the money is in the vast warehouses full of future product. The ship is small, in the old general manager's office. Alas a sudden influx of Europeans with money to buy the more expensive expressions mean we don't get chance to chat and taste. It's a long 4 miles back to that single track without a taste.
But for the record Bunnahabhain was my #1 whisky so I wasn't too worried. I think I really need to do a Bunnahabhain v Bruichladdich taste off, it's close but I think the Laddie might edge it.

On to the brewery but first a small detour about a mile away to the Islay Woollen Mill. OK, I'm biased but having a the well past retirement age owner describe operations and seeing a 100+ year old loom in operation was a highlight for me. The industrial revolution was just that, a real revolution, and having done craft weaving seeing the equipment that replaced it was wonderful and brings home the real revolution this actual was. It's noisy, oily, and mechanical but watching those flying shuttles shooting across pick after pick must have been magic 300 years ago. We buy a couple of small pieces. The person in the shop confirms that local drivers will wave as you pass. If you don't spot an obvious wave then you could possibly have missed the "Islay Claw" where the driver maintains both hands on the steering wheel but, crab-like, raises a single, crooked finger in recognition.

The brewery is in Islay Square which has a couple of other craft shops and a community garden. The garden is run on behalf of the community and produce is available to buy on an honesty system. We were too late for any vegetables for next week; Liz was tempted by several of the plants available but aware of the limited van space erred on the side of caution.

It was a lovely day, the sun was out, nice music poured out of the music tent, I had a good local pint (and Liz a coffee). All was well with the world. We discovered there was a limited edition of just 1000 bottles of Big Peat's ale, brewed in conjunction with a distiller that produces a whisky of the same name (and who was offering tasters, which we tried). I had one, it was good. I had another. We took two bottles home! Liz will probably have one tonight.

But first another meal at the campsite's bistro.

Walking back we comment what a lovely bright, clear evening it is. But there is just enough haze that the far side of the island has soft edges. Where has Ireland gone? Clearly visible from the campsite last night, today the tiniest haze and there is no hint of it. Bizarre!

Tues - the eagle is landed

We've been members of the RSGB probably for a couple of decades or more. We enjoy watching birds and the charity is a driving force behind all forms of wildlife conservation in the UK. We discovered that there are a couple of guided walks on this week, but the Thursday one will finish as our ferry is due to leave so we have just today's walk which is down on The Oa, on the other side of the island about 50 mins. drive away. So a 7:30 alarm call! We leave in plenty of time.

Islay is a very friendly island. On Mull I got used to drivers waving an acknowledgment when I pulled over into a passing place in a single track road but here the roads are dual lane, yet this morning we seemed to get a cheery wave from every car we passed. Lovely!

Now if I was to criticise Islay (it's hard, you probably appreciate we really like this island) it's the lack of signage, particularly off the main roads. It took a few map checks to be confident we were heading in the correct road to the exactly correct remote car park where the walk originated. The plus point of the journey was spotting a female hen harrier flying low over the moor. The not so good point was grounding the underside of the van twice.

It turned out to be a huge group, 25 of us and some people who looked as if they might even be slower than Liz and I. Excellent! The walk was excellent. A big thanks to the 2 Daves, the walk leader and the RSPB warden for the reserve. We learned a lot. For example The Oa is the RSPB's biggest reserve and it is a working farm but part of the RSPB's "Farming for wildlife" project. Some examples of what that means. Corncrakes are shy, secretive birds that spend most of their lives hiding in long grass. Once common across the UK they are now rare and mainly confined to the Scottish Islands. Their decline is mainly through modern farming literally mowing down chicks that remain hidden during the harvest. On the Oa nettles and irises have been planted, these provide good high cover early in the year, proving ideal breeding ground. At harvest time fields are cut centre outwards, driving birds to safety in the margins of the field rather than trapping them in the middle. Simple things. Islay also has a small Chough population, about 40 breeding pairs of these rare birds. Chough might be cliff dwellers but their diets are insects and grubs, many of which are supplied when choughs forage through cow pats in search of dung beetle larvae. The RSGB is carefully monitoring medication given to cattle in the Oa (necessary to provide resistance to disease and kill parasites) and the resultant suitability of the cow pat as breeding grounds for dung beetles (and hence food sources for Chough). This sort of ground breaking research is new and it's good to realise at least part of my annual membership goes to a woman who spendsher days often in the eye of a gale, up to her armpits in cow poo!

Before describing the walk, the weather. A lovely bright sunny day with barely a breath of breeze. Absolutely perfect conditions for mist to roll in from the sea (we're not that far from the Mull of Kintyre) and obliterate everything. It's really weird, where there is no mist there is really great clear sky and we can easily see all the way to Northern Ireland but where the mist hangs visibility is very limited. Annoyingly that mist is hanging directly over the valley this region's pair of Golden Eagles like to hunt. We probably wouldn't spot one if it was flying, but one wouldn't fly anyway as this mist makes spotting prey somewhat difficult.

So we walk on round, no eagle, no Chough either but a really cheeky little Reed Warbler singing close by on a fence post completely unphased by our presence. Quite a few Stonechat too as well as the ever present  Meadow Pipit. Then Dave has spotted a eagle. Not flying, it's sat on a crag several hundred yards away, just about discernible with binoculars but you really have to know where to look. The Raven half the distance away is easier to spot. Even in the spotting scope the eagle is tiny, but it is unmistakable. Another first for us. Another 'rarity' are the wild mountain goats which seem to defy gravity, or at least any sense of fear, as they graze at precarious angles on the extreme cliff edge

It's not just birds, one Dave points out a Buterwort, a carniverous moorland plant. Later on Liz and I find an even better example complete with burgeoning blue flower. The other Dave is trying to catch a tiny but very rare moth (I forget the species). Liz photographs Thrift, a small pink flower that only grows on clifftops, famous as the motif in pre-decimilsation thrupenny bits.

Now did you notice the name drop of "Northern Ireland". Islay is actually closer to Ireland than Scotland and as the mist recedes we can see along the coastline from Antrim to Donegal with Rathlin Island in the fore. To the south we can also see Bute, that bit of Scotland that hangs like a flaccid phallus.

Walk over, we headed back towards the campsite. Islay has two roads south, a new dual lane road and the old single lane one which runs pretty much parallel. We took the road less travelled, back to Bowmore and on to Bruichladdich to a craft market; the half dozen stalls were interesting but nothing for us. So on to the newest distillery Kilchamon. This is a farm distillery that only started in 2005. I'm not sure if it is privately owned, it must be hard for a small distillery to generate return on capital in the short term, remember Scotch Whisky has to be a minimum of 3 years old to even claim the name Whisky, and single malts tend to need a much longer pedigree to make their mark in a very competitive market. However Kilchamon have done just that, their standard expression 'Machir' having won several prizes.

They might be young, they might have a great shop, they might have an award winning whisky but without better staff they will fail to sell to the casual tourist market. Two very disinterested sales girls ignored us in the shop until I went up and specifically asked for a taster. A small sample was offered up with a modicum of charm. Trouble was it was good, the whisky is not in the supermarket so fairly unusual , so a bottle just had to be bought. On the plus side, this being Feis week they had invited Angels Share a glasses blowing company to demonstrate on site. A very skilled young lady demonstrated the twin arts of creating glass ornaments whilst simultaneously keeping an audience enthralled. We thought about it but the chance of getting one home intact...

The farm is a few miles down a single track road, the last few metres of which hosting a hard to spot bridge which bounced the van and thumped the sump frighteningly hard. Looking at the tarmac scars we're not the only one. But the road is also the road to Loch Gruinard RSPB reserve so we follow it round to the visitor centre. Apart from the two brown hares and male hen harrier en route there was nothing exciting and time was too short to allow a visit to the hides.

We wanted to press in to cover the last part of the island: Portnahaven and the Rhinns. Without boring you with geology I am unsure of, this part of the island is on a different tectonic plate to the rest and comprises very old rocks, so old that they were formed before life on earth and so are barren of fossils. It really would be good to come back here better read and look at the amazingly different geology on such a small island. We missed checking out the seal colony in the harbour and just had a swift drink in the local before heading back for an evening meal on a beautiful eve.

Mon - finding the plot

Decisions, decisions - do we carry on with Feis events and go over to the Caol Ila distillery for their open day or do we do our own thing. The deciding factor is actually tomorrow's plan. Tomorrow we hope to get up early enough to go down the bottom of the island to a wild area known as The Oa to join an RSPB walk. Trouble is the walk starts at 10 and although only 25-30 miles away it is getting on for an hour's drive.

So we decide on a dummy run, let's go down and make sure we know the small road we need to turn on to, no time tomorrow to get lost. This means a trip down to the bottom of the island and the ferry port of Port Ellen, where we depart on Thursday.

Now along the coast from Port Ellen is a line of 3 distilleries, Laphraoig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg. Get any tourist guide of Islay and you will get the iconic shot taken from sea of these three pretty white distilleries all in a line. By road or foot (there is a tarmac footpath) it's a 3 mile flat trip from Port Ellen to Arbeg passing the other 2 en route. We do this. Stopping at Ardbeg to look at the gift shop for prices we take a complimentary sampler of the standard 10 year old expression, very peaty with an enormously long finish, I'm still trying it when we stroll into Lagavulin's gift shop. No samples on offer here, a much lower key visitor experience. I'm sure that had we asked we could have sampled but we'll leave that for another day.

By contrast, Laphraoig, the island's best selling brand, is all about visitor experience. A well stocked gift shop, a museum and a samples bar where I'm sure we could have sampled all 6 expressions on offer. I'm driving don't forget and despite these samples being less than a standard dram the whiskies are high strength, the special 2016 Feis expression (Cairdeas if my memory serves) being cask strength 56% by volume as opposed to the normal blended whisky's 40%. So I try that and Liz tastes the Triple Wood and we swap so we each get a taste.

Now Laphraoig are masters at the marketing game. Many years ago they introduced Friends Of Laphraoig, the idea being that on each bottle there was a unique number which you registered with them and, in return, you became the owner of 1 square foot of their peat fields, here on Islay. Pure hokum, of course, but here's the twist, should you visit the distillery and present them with your ownership certificate they will pay you rent, 1 dram. Actually in this case the 1 dram is a little 50cl miniature bottle of Laphraoig, a double measure to enjoy at your leisure. Now, a long time ago I sent in my magic number and got issued a certificate. Long lost in the intervening history, partly because I only did it to share in the joke. However at the distillery they have the first several thousand FOLs lovingly inscribed in copperplate in several large ledgers. My membership is old enough I could be there, certainly it is so old my Gmail or IVARC email addresses aren't on their system, so it probably predates 2004 when I moved off Pipex. I can't remember my Pipex mail account but wonder if my FOL even pre-dated email!!! An assistant tries to help but we can't find any trace of me on the system (not to say I'm not there, there system isn't geared for this sort of search). So no photo of my name writ in their annals sadly. However the assistant did inform me how to reregister there and then without needing a bottle and so claim my rent. Liz did the same and their printer churned out two nice certificates on decent quality cartridge paper. There is a small map showing the location of our adjacent 1' square plots. Laphraoig play this game well, there are racks of wellies to change into and flags of the world so you can wander out and stick a flag on your claim. Crazy, yep! Got to be done, hell yes!! We got as accurate as we could but the GPS was showing an error of up to 5m so apologies to anyone finding a Union Flag already in their plot.

Back to the visitor's centre to claim our rent.

That was fun, on round to Bowmore, which despite being on the coast is the centre of the island and it's largest town. Which means to say it has a bank and half a dozen shops. Any guesses as to what else it has? Did I hear someone say "Distillery"? Well done, someone's been paying attention. We look in but no tasters on offer unless we ask and we can't really be bothered. To reiterate, to anyone concerned over the state of our health, these tasters are, I'd guess between 1/3 and 1/2 a standard measure. With a taster each at Ardbeg and Laphraoig we'd consumed about one single whisky measure which would normally have the same units as half pint of beer; the higher strengths here may have pushed that up to 3/4 pint equivalent. Much more and I would be in danger of the stringent Scottish drink driving limits. 

We did get a drink in Bowmore, a coffee! Back to the van for a chill (and for Liz to do the clothes washing - before there are too many feminist screams, I have been driving along holiday, we decided on role allocation early on), I've got blogs to write. But first The Times crossword, less than a hour. It's been a while since I could claim that. Dinner tonight is eating out, the campsite has a bistro. It is so good I write my second ever TripAdvisor review saying so. Liz and I both had a Chicken Supreme with bacon and pepperoni in a peppercorn sauce. Dessert was something called "Stairway To Heaven", a 3 different chocolate dish with islands ice cream. All washed down with a very nice bottle of merlot. Merlot?! Red wine with chicken?! The bacon/pepperoni meant it worked and only a reasonable red could have accompanied that dessert.

Sadly the day ended on a low. Whilst eating dessert a local police officer came in for a casual chat with one of the staff. Probably just a routine weekly visit, this is very much a community island. Overhearing the conversation it appears to many campervan and motorhomes had been camping where they shouldn't have at Bruichladdich. But far worse, at least one had dumped the contents of their chemical toilet over the grass. The bright blue toilet fluid is formaldehyde based and doesn't do much good to living material, without considering the effluent within it. Thoughtless and disgusting. Residents will focus on this not the tourist dollars brought in. I foresee many places being festoonex with No Overnight Parking notices. Scotland does have a right to access law which means you can legally camp on unenclosed land but that right does not apply to motor vehicles driving into the land. Currently a blind eye is turned in most places but the actions of one cretin can so easily influence the future for many. The policeman was saying that he hoped one day to catch someone in the act, the implication being the proverbial book would be thrown at them. I would certainly hope so, how can anyone be so stupid.

Actually sensible disposal of chemical waste is a problem, it obviously shouldn't be dumped but less obviously it shouldn't be poured down a toilet. Here in Scotland most sites will allow "non-resident" dumping, some for a small fee, others for free. Many sites have external disposal points that the public can just drive to to without even needing to inform the campsite, they also have points to dump dirty (grey) water and take on board fresh water. There really is no need for anyone to leave their byproducts out in public.

Sunday - a party in a distillery

It's Feis here on Islay. A week long whisky and music festival, although the emphasis seems to be on the whisky! This means the island is busy with campervans. Note, I said "campervans" rather than "motorhomes". Whereas these were relatively rare on Mull and Westeros compared to motorhomes, particularly the large horsebox type. Interestingly the tourist population is much younger - campervans are for young folk, motorhomes for the retired wrinkly brigade. Our little Romahome has characteristics of both a campervan (it's compact) and a motorhome (it's a purpose built shell rather than van conversion) so maybe that means we are wrinklies who are young at heart. Sounds about right!

Of course camping with youths carries several advantages, less dogs  on the campsite and live music as a band practice mid morning (possibly even Skipinish, the band we get to enjoy later today, it certainly was a similar sound).

Today's agenda is a trip to the Bruichladdich (pronounced brook-laddie) distillery for their open day, part of Feis. Several bands are on, including Skipinish, there will be traditional dancing, craft for sale, the local brewery are there plying their wares, prior to their own open day on Wednesday. A party at a distillery where they've invited the local brewery and have good music - what's not to like?

It's a 2.5 mile walk along the road from the campsite; the sun is shining on the merry band of pilgrims plodding their way joyfully towards the distillery. It's slightly downhill and after about 3/4 of a mile the pier at Bruichladdich hoves into view, not quite nearly there yet, it's a good mile and a half to go. We know when we are getting close by all the parked/abandoned cars. We arrive just after 1:30, an hour into the proceedings and it is packed. Two urgent things on the agenda, find a seat to take the weight of Liz's painful foot and get a beer, the walk was thirsty work. No hope of a seat but one of the sheds has a low wall we can take advantage of. In the midst of the crowd Liz sits, takes her shoes off and I give her a foot massage. Looking up we are sat right next to a large stainless steel tank full of the distillery's new venture - The Botanical gin.

Beers quaffed, foot relieved we can go and enjoy the entertainment. And it's good, Skipinish are a young vibrant Scottish folk band that play a mix of classics, their own material, a smattering of country and western and even a Mark Knopfler number. We buy a CD.

Bruichladdich is an unusual distillery, known for doing things a little differently. For example their branding is based upon an "aqua" color which is definitely at odds with the more conservative branding of some other brands.

This branding even extends to colouring their bottles an opaque aqua colour. Most unusual. I believe they were privately owned until very recently when they were picked up by the Remy Martin cognac group. Also unusually for Islay, their whiskies are unpeated (as are Bunnahabhain's but the rest of the island has very peaty malts)

Back to the party, it's excellent! Skipinish are exactly the high energy Scottish band needed to get the crowd both dancing and singing, and lubricated by a dream and a beer or two we join them

Now we missed the auction, we were in the craft shed buying a small print. However I gather the last bottle sold (if, indeed, there was more than one bottle sold - we missed the auction remember) was a huge 4.5l bottle of the 1991 Yellow Submarine expression. It went for £2,500 I think. Imagine the crowd's surprise when another two bottles were produced. Not for auction but for sharing with the assembly! So we got to taste a £2,500 bottle of whisky (OK, so it was a huge bottle but pro rataing to a standard 70cl bottle and we are really still taking of about £300 a bottle). To be fair we watched carefully and made sure everyone who wanted to partake had done so and it was only folk going up for seconds before we joined them for a second sample ourselves

For some unknown reason Liz's foot didn't seem to hurt on the walk back!! But it was a long way and there were two (very packed) hotels in Port Charlotte. We needed to rest and spent and hour or so in the delightful company of Robert and Christine from Seattle who were on they way home after working for a while in Tokyo. Apparently going home the scenic route was as cheap as direct so they decided to add a few adventures en route.

A great party and a lovely day.

Sat - avec mois le deluge

Last night's choice of car park to overnight in was excellent. Despite being close to the train line it was quiet enough as few trains use the line. Wi-Fi was available via CalMac whose ferry terminal was just over the line or BT Fon. A decent night's sleep too.

Rather than brew up in the van we might as well indulge ourselves and go to Wetherspoons for breakfast. Yes I know it's a pub but they do a good breakfast cheap and their filter coffee is "bottomless cup" as our transatlantic cousins like to refer to free refills. It's only a couple of hundred yards and the rain has eased off to light (some very heavy downpours overnight). We sit down and I'm about to order when I realise that my wallet is back in the van. Now Liz could pay but yesterday I withdrew £200 from a hole in the wall so we had cash for next week. Not comfortable with that in the van,still it's only a little stroll, off I set in the light rain. Within 50m the rain has turned heavy which is just a passing phase on the way through to torrential. By the time I reach the van I am dripping. Dilemma, stay in the van until it passes over risking a cold breakfast, or head back. The decision was made for me when I saw how much water was coming off my raincoat into the van. No point in getting both me and the van interior damp so I hood up and set off back into the deluge.

The good news is that my Paramo jacket is completely waterproof. The bad news is that I wasn't wearing over trousers and my legs are soaked. Grasping my trouser thighs it is not difficult to wring out a steam of water. Not comfortable. So a waddle to the gents is called for and performing movements akin to an Apache rain dance (how totally inappropriate) I raise both thighs under the warming caresses of the hand drier. Repeat until the drier sulks from overuse and refuse to play any more, then try the next one. Wetherspoons you need more than 2 hand driers for these trouser drying moments!. Fortunately no one entered during this procedure, I fear my actions might have been attributed to severe incontinence!

We breakfasted, hunkered down in Wetherspoons until the rain abated, wandered the streets of Oban in the drizzle. Annoyingly I discovered W H Smiths did have a couple of copies of Para Handy on the shelves after all. Oh well, my eBay copies should be with David by now.

Oban is a nice neat little town, basically one long shopping street with all the through traffic funneled through it. They've added a marginally out of town complex with Aldi. Lidl and Tesco, just a couple of hundred metres out of the centre. Imagine what happens to all that traffic flow when the traffic lights to turn right into the supermarkets are not working. Yep, gridlock throughout the town. In addition, the entire pavement network is being redone so pedestrians are similarly inconvenienced, it's a mess! Fortunately our little haven of a car park is just out of the main flow on the ferry side of town so no problem for us! I did say it was a good choice!

High street shopping merely provided a whisky measuring cup (it seemed a good idea) and a book. The book being " Writing On The Road ", Sue Reid Sexton's tales of traveling Scotland (and France) in a tiny Romahome campervan. As a humble blogger there's nothing worse than someone else beating you to the publisher!

Supermarkets not only provided essential food restocks but also a foldable solar charger that will hang in the van windows and recharge phones etc. We've been looking for one for a while and Lidls turned up trumps.

It is interesting that I blog about the mundanity of shopping in Oban when we have a 4 hour long ferry trip to Islay (via Colonsay). But the crossing was unmemorable, apart from the television broadcasting the history of Hibernians winning the Scottish Cup and Crystal Palace being denied the English equivalent.

Arrival on Islay was latish. 8:30pm so a quick run across to a campsite. Lots of campers parked along the shoreline, so maybe we'll wild camp later in the week, but let's get our bearings first and go for the Pont Mor site.

Friday, this is the life

Back to the mainland (briefly) today, with the midday ferry to Oban. Nothing to report of the morning, just the usual routine of breaking camp: showers, empty the loo, ready the van, check for tyre damage after yesterday's "thump".

Let's just finish last night first. We wandered across the road from the campsite to the local and most excellent pub. Found the only reliable WiFi on the island and got taking with a couple of fellow travellers. They told us where a white tailed sea eagle eyrie was to be found (we just didn't have time this morning) and also that they'd seen an otter by the campsite the previous evening. A few minutes after they left one was back telling us that if we were quick we might catch a glimpse of the otter. So pints half downed we scurried out of the pub and across to quickly catch a distant glimpse of an otter playing about a hundred yards away.

Back to the pub to finish our beers. I got talking with one of the local locals. I wish we could have stayed, bought him a dram and heard tales of the isle. I'd already made a favourable impression by pronouncing " Islay" with a short A as in Africa rather than the long A as in Day. Apparently he had one American visitor seeking directions to "Ten-en-ay". Well I suppose IONA could be read that way!!

Oban was fine, but we have nothing to do for this afternoon and tomorrow morning. We walked the shops and bought nothing other than food and newspapers. The prime problem is tonight's accommodation. There is a campsite quite a way away, in town there is a free 24 hour car park but annoyingly it is height barriered. The adjacent lorry/motorhome park wants a tenner. I don't mind paying but we are car size and being penalised for our vertical space requirements. We hunt around and all the free parking seems to have" No overnight sleeping " covenants. We did find free parking at McCaig's Tower but it wasn't flat and was a bit out of town.

 Eventually we found a private car park that was parking for the sadly closed bowling alley. £5 for 24 hours and no apparent caveats. So we park up and wander into town for a pint.

McCaig's Tower is interesting. A Victorian folly commissioned by a wealthy banker who realised that many of the masonry workers in the area struggled with no work throughout the winter months. So he commissioned his folly, only to be worked on during the winter. It's not a tower but a circular structure, a short of cross between amphitheatre and aqueduct. It commands a wonderful view over Oban town.

Currently sitting at a window table in Wetherspoons, stealing their electricity to recharge out phones and looking out across the bay. Nice way to spend an evening!

Wed/Thurs–out and about

The idea was to pop over to Staffa today to see Fingal’s Cave. But it was so horribly yesterday, the boat is open and we might be sitting for 45 minutes in cold wind or even rain to get there and again on the return trip. Given that it is not a cheap trip we decide to duck out. Of course, it would help if we had internet access and an up to date weather forecast.

So, in nice sunshine (don’t it always go?) we set off across the island on the A road we’ve only part travelled. First stop Bunessan, but it’s only 11:30 – the newspapers aren’t in yet so no crossword today possibly. In Bunessan we find a charity shop – apparently there are a chain of 3 across the island and each month funds get allocated to local charities that need it rather than just one organisation benefiting. Behind the formal charity shop is a second – the book shed which is open 24*7 and has an honesty box. We find nothing in either and press on to Ardlanish Weavers.  This is a local weaving studio using professional 60” mechanical looms to make cloth from undyed local wools. Finding it is the hard bit – basically its a farm building in the middle of a working farm at the end of a road that only leads to the farm and was never designed or tourist traffic. It’s only a couple of miles down but feels three times as far. Still we get given a tour and because I professed to craft weaving we got a much more technical explanation than I expect the normal Joe Public does. As they owner said its about 2 steps up from the craft weaving I do with serious (albeit fairly vintage) looms. Still the process is exactly the same, it’s just they can make wider cloth, with more consistent tension and much faster than I can. Although I must admit, looking at their Colour And Weave sampler wallhanging I would probably have done pretty much as well on a smaller scale and my waistcoat uses a very similar technique. The single variety wool was expensive compared to cheap shop wool but reasonably priced for what it was so I went with some black Hebridean for another hat and Liz went with Manx for some gloves. It was nice to see the waste loom cloth ends were sold as scraps, bookmarks etc and the offcuts from tailored garments sold as fat quaters for quilters – so Liz bought some. Talking to the owners, the idea came about because they were just burning fleeces – sheep need to be shorn regularly and the cost of shipping a fleece to the mainland cost more than it would sell for. So they found a spinner in Yorkshire and acquired fleeces from elsewhere and made high value woven goods to make the transportation worthwhile. A good business model.

The drive across to Cragnure was, as most drives on Mull are, stunning. Driving through a deep glen with waterfalls cascading down the craggy hills and a fast flowing burn alongside. No wonder there were, “Careful of Otters” signs – although we failed to see any of these elusive, shy creatures. Pictures of course, don’t do landscapes any justice at all.




From Cragnure into Tobermory for a mooch around the shops.  Some basic food shopping; the Co-op, the newspapers were now in but The I had already sold out. And the last Times went whilst we were in there too – no crossword or sudoku today. Now there are 3 really interesting shops in Tobermory (4 if you include the distillery shop). The first we encountered was what looked like the usual gift shop stuff but had antler and horn products. On closer inspect, much of the shop is given over to walking stick manufacturing parts. You could buy all the impedimenta needed to make a thumbstick or shepherd’s crook. There’s some really specialised stuff, such as ferrules, crook head blanks, brass collars, double screw jointing pieces etc. Wonderful stuff and I might have been sorely tempting to buy some had I had packed my book on stickmaking which is gracing the shelves back home. But not knowing exactly what I might need it was best left.

The second shop was even more esoteric – Brown’s the Ironmongers and Off Licence. You may remember me writing that we’d seen the local whisky cheaper than than the distillery itself sold it. That was Brown’s – whose shelves also sported, microscopes, electric guitars, an air brush set, chopsticks, hunting knives, kitchenware, toys & games (including Carcassonne), sewing bits, car bits, DIY and electrics, and even a ukulele! We decided against whisky, we might just have enough after next week’s Islay visit but I did get myself a decent Opinel pocket knife along with a sharpening stone and Liz has been looking for ages for the pot lifter (basically a handle for saucepans etc that don’t have a handle – one of which we have in the van).

The final shop was a combination of gift shop, camping shop and yacht chandlers. Some very interesting bits’n’bobs but a couple of plastic locking toggles for our drawstring bags were all we bought.

The amazing thing was these shops all had very competitive prices compared to the mainland. I did manage to get a quick bit of internet and looked up my Opinel sharpener on Amazon which was actually more than the price I paid at Browns.

Tonight we are staying at the campsite just 1.5 miles above (yes, above) Tobermory so we can walk down for the football but given the steepness of the return journey Liz decides that she would prefer driving. The campsite was pretty much like the football – something we would want to forget! Still the Mishnish pub was nice enough, although it did get a bit busy. I was hoping to post the blog entries but despite our Android phones connecting to the internet, this Windows 10 laptop connected and then took a while “Checking Network Requirements” before deciding that it could connect to the pub’s router but not the internet itself. Doh!

Remember Tuesday when it rained all day. That was the dress rehearsal for Thursday Not quite true, there were a few periods of lighter rain on Thursday but as I write this now at 8:20pm it is still drizzling which is the best it’s been all day. Still we want to take a look at the little museum in Tobermory (there’s nothing better to do) so don raincoats. The museum really does have to be commended for cramming so much into such a small, single room venue. It’s eclectic but very interesting and more museums should follow the model of trying to squeeze as much in as possible. The one sad story – one of the displays was a Spanish wreck and a case displaying recovered material. A few year’s ago the 2 Spanish Reals (Pieces Of Eight) were stolen. Sad innit?

Next we decide a drive around the top of the island to Calgary and past Ulva island. There have been sighting of both Golden and White Tailed Sea Eagles here this week. Today’s rain probably didn’t help. Roads were horrible, single track of course, but much of the surface was broken and potholed. On one of the rare straights a car pulled in to a passing place at the end so I accelerated to probably 30mph as an act of courtesy to reduce its waiting time. I don’t know what I hit, I didn’t see the pothole or rock in the road but it was one hell of a bump. I’m hoping no long term damage has been done. Trying to drive hands off to check the tracking is hard when the road is so windy and when cambers are somewhat varied to say the least. I was only about 45 miles but took well over 2 hours, speeds rarely exceeded 30mph, and quite often didn’t get much above 20, 2nd gear was the gear of choice with 1st and 3rd playing an important role occasionally. It is very tiring driving. And I was glad to get round to Salen and on the main 2 lane A road to drive down to Craignure for tonight’s campsite. It’s expensive but the best facilities on the island and just a 2 minute drive to the ferry tomorrow as well as an easy walk to the pub or hotel tonight. That is if the rain stays off. We had to just park up quickly when we got o the campsite, it was raining too heavily to even make it worthwhile sorting out the power lead to put the kettle on.

So here’s some wildlife in the wet from today’s sodden travels

Tuesday–confined to barracks

OK – no complaints. It’s been cold but we’ve had little rain since Edinburgh so were due some. And it’s good if it all comes at once. It started raining heavily at 10am this morning and stopped at 5pm. Raining sufficiently heavily that it was just too wet even to drive off to somewhere like the local weavers. So a van day.

 

There’s plenty to do in the van, we have Kindle and books, crafts (knitting and crochet for Liz, weaving and ukulele for me), board games (solitaire and 2-player), audio books etc. At a different location we’d even have the internet!

 

Nwo when we were on Orkney Liz bought a book entitled 150 Crochet Blocks so her day has been spent making 3 of them. Me, I am exploring a type of weave know as Monk’s Belt on my tiny inkle loom. One of the several patterns this weave structure allows is celtic knotwork – a nice tie-in with yesterday’s Iona visit. I managed a small sample bookmark and a decent bookmark before stopping to write yesterday’s and this blog entry.

 

Considering we’ve not been out of the van for 21 hours (OK so 10 of that was sleeping) I’m amazed it hasn’t seemed claustrophobic in the least. The only downside is I tend to get a lot of tension in the back muscles due to the not great posture offered by the van seating. Of course, we needed our thermal socks and the van heater, although now the rain has stopped it seems much warmer.

 

The rain stopped suddenly at 5 and it was like a scene from Watership Down as all these creatures popped out from their burrows and scurried around the campsite. Most heading towards the toilet block, others to the freshwater taps to fill up containers. I did both of these and then went to the chemical toilet disposal point – the one with the Jolly Roger if you remember. Whilst working for IBM I had many opportunities for travel and my trip to India is the one I have fondest memory of. The business side went well and the customer was really pleased that not only did I install the system they wanted but solved a major problem with another system that had been plaguing them for a while and was not on my agenda. Returning from the hinterland to Calcutta I decided to explore the train and elected to use the 3rd class Indian toilet car rather than the 1st class one provided for esteemed passengers such as myself. This was a decision that still haunts me but put me in good stead for today’s encounter with Fidden Farm’s open cesspit. Basically you lift a manhole into a fermenting vat of human effluent, some of which may have been treated with chemicals to help it break down and disperse odours. It was obvious that not all such chemical treatments actually worked as well as their vendors may have hoped. Most disposal points are just sort of huge toilets with all the effluent whooshed around a u-bend, out of sight, mind and nostrils but this hole in the ground was a little more ‘in your face’.

 

Well that’s about it, when the highlight of the day is the trip to the disposal point, it probably really has been quite an uneventful time. Still the forecast is better for tomorrow and mixed but warmer over the next week so hopefully we we’ll get more chances to explore than we did today.

 

Not quite the end – I wrote at at about 7pm when the rain had abated. We then had dinner by which time it had started raining again. Ah, the joys of camping, having to don raincoats to do the washing up . In fact the gap in the rain meant the shower block was heaving, now it was raining it was empty once again. So might as well take 3 showers, a cold one walking down, a hot one in the shower block and a final return cold one. The rain is set in for the night.

 

Night-night.

Monday–a shabby raincoat and a squint

Well, I thought Liz said we were off to see the tomb of Columbo . Yep, Iona today to visit the monastery and the place that Christianity first came to these shores (or more precisely, an island just off these shores).

 

First, an explanation. I’m sure many of the myriads of readers may be aware of my avowed atheism and so wonder why this trip has included visits to the Christian pilgrimage sites of both Lindisfarne and Iona. Quite simply that the entire future of English history, right up to the last Gulf War and probably Cameron’s policy was shaped by the events on those two island retreats 1500 years ago. Indeed, not just English history but World history too, certainly the current right wing Christian militia that leads to buffoons like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump becoming worrisome candidates for the most powerful job in the world. It would have been a different story had the Vikings prevailed earlier or the Scottish and Northumbrian kings resisted the sophistry of the early Christian evangelists. And to be fair, we did attend a (pseudo) Druid Beltane ceremony at the Ring Of Brodgar just to prove we treat all religion equally, with respect for those who believe as long as their beliefs don’t intersect with our lives.

 

Iona is only just across the water from Fionnphort, a 10 minute trip on the Calmac ferry. It’s a 1.25 mile walk from the campsite to Fionnphort and we catch a glimpse of the ferry and Iona abbey on the way.

 

 

Fionnphort is the main port for both Iona and Staffa (Fingal’s Cave). It consists of one shop/post office, a pub/restaurant, a seafood vendor, the Calmac ferry terminal and a community centre, with a handful of houses comprising the community. It is not a big place! Iona only allows service vehicles and vehicles for residents so the ferry is mainly pedestrian and amazingly priced at only £3.30 return! It’s a calm uneventful crossing.

 

Iona seems to be run by the Brotherhood of Iona, a Christian community. It is surprisingly much more commercial than Fionnphort, with a bar/restaurant, couple of hotels and several craft and gift shops. Of course some of the gift shops continue the tradition of providing religious artifacts to pilgrims, although today it’s more likely to be a resin cast of one of the Celtic Crosses rather than a Holy Toennail Clipping from Saint Columba himself.

 

The abbey is maintained by Historic Scotland so yet more savings thanks to our English Heritage cards. It has an audio guide and lots of informative boards, pretty well done all in all. It is quite amazing to be walking on a site that has had a constant stream of pilgrims for nearly 1500 years and there is no doubt that many folk their today have stronger beliefs in the saint than we do. Still there is a lot of history here, much of it on display and the Celtic Crosses are magnificent as are the ornate medaeival grave markers, many with full size knights in armour sculpted on them. I hadn’t realised that the St John Cross, the one with a circle around the cross arms (as shown in the pics below) probably came into being as a simple feat of engineering – the circular bits are struts to hold up the weight of the arms on the early huge crosses.

 

Some examples:

 

 

 

The most impressive was what is believed to be the original and oldest stone cross of this type anywhere. It was so massive that even the reinforcing ring wasn’t adequate enough to stop it breaking and damaging over the years, although many fragments have been put back together in this impressive piece in the museum

 

 

We wandered around for a few hours, none of the craft stuff really took our fancy, but then again almost nothing ever does. Liz did manage to find some Iona spun wool and the same shade in both arran weight (for a hat) and double knitting (matching gloves). Me, I found the most excellent book – Peat Smoke and Spirit – a history/geography of Islay told from the perspective of the 7 distilleries on the island. Perfect reading material in preparation for next week’s venture.

 

Apart from a gentle dig at the stupidity of religion in politics, particularly American politics today’s entry has been relatively rant free. Time to change that. Tell me, why Oh why, if someone can afford an iPad they can’t afford an iPhone, cheap Android phone or digital camera? I.e. why on earth do people use an iPad to take photographs? It is far more obtrusive than a camera, appears to take much longer to frame even the simplest shot and is just a ruddy nuisance for people passing by. Given the paucity of internet or even phone signal on Iona, even taking an iPad seemed a major act of folly. It’s going to happen, one day, one of these people are going to be in my way and will hear “Oh for f***s sake, go buy a camera!”  just as they are about to press whatever part of the screen constitutes a shutter.

 

Earlier I showed a picture of Iona from Mull, here’s the reciprocal along with a close up of the abbey from the ferry.

 

 

Back at 5, time for a pint in the pub The Keel Row at Fionnphort whilst waiting for their restaurant to open at 6. Liz enjoyed her salmon a little more than I did my beef which was good but nothing special. Still a nice walk back and just before we got to the campsite we saw 3 young lapwings, too young to fly, chasing after their mother. Not seen lapwing chicks before so that was a nice end to the day.

Sunday–the chillin’ starts tomorrow

Off to Oban today on the 12:30 ferry. Lets work backward, need to be at the ferry port for 12, it’s an hour’s journey, best allow another hour for traffic hold ups, give us enough time to get fuel etc. So need to be offsite by 10. Need 90 mins for breakfast, wash, prepare the van etc so an 8:30 alarm call. Nah, at that time of the morning it will still be cold so will take me at least 15 mins to get out of bed, lets make it 8:00 alarm.

 

All is good and despite chatting to folks on site we actually leave about 9:45 despite not actually arising from bed until 8:30. We are really getting organised this holiday. We were right to add extra drive time as we find ourselves stuck behind a slowish motorhome for the first 11 miles. Definitely not many overtaking opportunities. Still in Oban for 10:50 and time to find Tescos for fuel and a newspaper. I’m getting back into crosswords after many years. Arrive at the ferryport in plenty of time at about 11:30. No coffee shop. Still it’s only a couple of minutes into town.

 

Now yesterday I made a mistake. Whilst in Inverarary I should have picked up a copy of the 2002 omnibus edition of Para Handy stories. I didn’t because book space is short in the van and I decided that, despite my lack of love for Amazon, I would get the Kindle edition. Yes, gentle reader, you may noet that not only Amazon but Tesco another of my love to dislikes has featured highly in our shopping. In the case of Tesco it’s not the lure of a few pence per litre cheaper fuel but the fact that they are the only UK supermarket chain that stock local bottled beers. And a good range, at supermarket prices. OK, the don’t stock the very tiny local breweries I like to seek out but they don’t do a bad job and are usually a good stocking up point (nothing new in Oban though). I digress, back to the Para Handy saga. There isn’t a Kindle edition, so I will need the paper book after all. Also overnight David, who is regularly checking my house and tidying my mail off the doormat in return for the week’s Radio Times, doesn’t have a copy, it would be nice to get one for him. So instead of coffee we wander into Waterstones. Nope, it is out of stock and probably out of print. It appears to have sporadic short print runs. Try W H Smith they say. OK, but never again. W H Smith has taken to this fad of splitting books by category, so any book you might want could appear in one of many places in the store and you are never quite sure you’ve checked them all. Anyway the section with local novelists didn’t have a copy so I think it is safe to say W H Smith didn’t stock either.

 

Whilst waiting to go on the ferry I noticed free CalMac Wifi, so a quick eBay sourced two new copies and I was in the midst of the order when waved to drive onboard. Still having WiFi I managed to complete the order for books about a Clyde steamer captain whilst on the Mull ferry – how cool is that!

 

The 50 minute crossing was millpond like. Nothing to comment really, it was too cold to spend the time above deck although we did pass some picturesque castle as we sailed by (and had I internet access I would have looked up details). We were third off the ferry so had a fairly open run – rather than head directly to the campsite early we decided to take in the island’s one ‘large’ town Tobermory. Large being, of course, a relative term, this photo captures most of it

 

 

The quaint coloured houses are a well known icon and my sister informs me the town and its coloured houses feature in the BBC pre-school programme Balamory. Now there was something I didn’t know, We got time to get a coffee and see about distillery tours, However a wander through the shops found a whisky shop selling the Tobermory 10 yr old (the only one we can afford) £5:50 cheaper than the distillery itself so we may miss out on the distillery tour! It’s perishingly cold again today too and I’m still looking for a heavier weight fleece. In one of the shops we found exactly what I was looking for, and on sale too, so we bought it. Trouble was it was pink, women’s and in Liz’s size.

 

A quick digression on Mull geography and road network.  Basically the ferry arrives at Craignure about 1/3 the way up the eastern side and there are just two A roads: one going about 40 miles due west across the island and the other, which we had just taken going 30 miles north to Tobermory. We now needed to get to Fionnphort on the extreme western edge. Two options, double  back to Craignure and across via the other A road  or take one of the two B roads. There’s a B road which loops around the top of the island (about 50 miles) and another that loops and joins the halfway point of the two A roads. Oh, this is hard to describe – go look it up. And whilst you are about it, I’m just about to describe how remote Fionnphort is so check on that too! Anyway the A roads are mainly single track roads with passing places which should have warned us about the B roads.  We doubled back half way to Craignure on the A road and then took the narrow, windy B road inland towards the coast at Gruline. A busy road too, lots of stopping and pulling into passing places. Traffic thinned out once we reached the coast but was still busy enough. It’s hard driving, the roads are narrow and twisty, the B road has a poor surface so being mindful of potholes is also necessary, sheep seem to think the other verge grass is greener and either loiter with intent or just meander as they feel fit. All this whilst keeping good distance vision for the next passing place and oncoming traffic, ideally adjusting speed so both coincide. This means the driver is a bit hampered when it comes to appreciating the scenic views, and the coastal part of this was very ruggedly scenic. It is also a great place for wilding, and several vans were pulled up off the road where they’ll stay for a couple of days. Not far after Gruline the road changes, it starts to meander round a mountain, having steepish up and downhill sections and sharp bends. The road also narrows even more and the road surface deteriorates even further. There is grass growing up the middle. Getting it wrong could mean coming off the hill faster than you might want or damaging the axle. Not a good place to meet 2 cars in close convoy coming the other direction. I try to reverse but there isn’t a passing place for some way so I squeeze tightly into a bend putting my wheel as close as I dare to the road edge. I’m on the mountain side not the sea so no drop if I get it wrong but the surface drops dramatically after the small scree section at the edge of the tarmac so I’ll have great trouble getting back on the road if I get it wrong. I judge I’ve pulled over enough – the first driver isn’t happy and tries to get me to tuck in further but there’s nowhere to go so he folds in his wing mirror and inches past. Strangely the following car seemed to get past without quite so much fuss. I pull back onto the road and there about 10m past where I let them pass was a passing place! The b******ds could easily have slipped in to this, one at a time and we could have passed with no effort. Pain! No further incidents although a couple of horrible bangs and clangs, I think I fired a stone up into my underneath and also hit a pothole sufficiently deep to ground my bumper. We won’t be coming back along this road!

 

Fionnphort is at the extreme western edge of this island of extemes and is very remote (you did go and look it up, didn’t you?). Fidden Farm campsite is a further 1.25 miles down, curiously the best tarmaced bit of road on the entire island. Still single track, of course, but nice smooth black hard top. The farm is a working farm and sheep abound on the approach road; entering the farmyard itself we are greeted by 3 border collies, who come up to say hello before bounding off again. I must say that were I to ever contemplate dog ownership (most unlikely) then the border collie would be my choice. Fees paid we are told to camp where we like. This is not a conventional laid out campsite, more an area of flatish dune and moorland. No electric, WiFi or other such frills, just a washblock with toilets, fresh water and chemical disposal point which I have yet to investigate (I only do so when necessary) but the Jolly Roger flying over it as a marker is ominous. We spot a small gap in the row of vans parked overlooking he bay and with careful positioning can get the van almost level so that’ll do. The view isn’t bad, either.

 

 

There are a few vans around us. If you are ever planning to come here, my tip would be to pay at the farmhouse and then not continue on onto the main area but go back down the entrance road, there’s a small gravel path leading to dunes there which tends not to have quite so many vans.

 

A long day’s driving – probably 80 miles or so on single track road. An earlier night, methinks.