Island hopping
Jul. 12th, 2008 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
williamjmI've been on the west coast of Scotland for the past few days. We spent three nights in Oban, a frankly fairly unattractive town in a very scenic setting. We took two day-trips over to the Isle of Mull and surrounding islands. The first involved setting off from Oban on the ferry at 9:30 in the morning (from a ferry terminal that appears to have been designed to feel as much like an airport terminal as possible, although quite why anyone would want anything to feel like an airport terminal is beyond me). At this point the weather was extremely overcast, probably about 15 degrees centigrade with a strong and bitingly cold wind (my hands were actually starting to feel a bit numb after standing on deck taking photographs for a while) - in the Scottish islands this is what's usually referred to as a good summer day. We then took a bus over to Fionnphort on the west of the island passing some fairly impressive-looking mountains (including the pyramid-topped Ben More). We then got on a smaller boat to go to the island of Staffa. Staffa is a very interesting place to visit, the columns of rock rising a couple of hundred feet straight out of the Atlantic Ocean are impressive to look at and the famed Fingal's Cave was particularly impressive to walk into. On top of the island it is surprisingly green with some very spectacular views of the surrounding islands and it's actually quite pleasant if you can ignore the continual wind (the sun had come out by this point which helped a lot). The only disappointment is that the captain of the boat had promised puffins on the island but I didn't see any of them :( After that we headed over to the isle of Iona, taking a detour along the way so we could be touristy and take photographs of a large marine animal identified by most people at the time as a basking shark, although my marine biology knowledge (mostly obtained from looking at the posters in the ferry terminal) suggests it may actually have been a minke whale, it was quite an impressive animal whatever it was. I liked Iona, it was a very tranquil picturesque island although the famed abbey is perhaps not terribly interesting for those of us with little interest in religion. After that another ferry back to Fionnphort, back on the bus and the ferry to Oban. At some point during the day I seemed to manage to get sunburned, which given that the day started off so overcast, the forecast was for heavy rain and Mull not being noted as one of the sunnier parts of the country I was a bit surprised that it was that sunny.
The next day we went back to Mull and wandered round Duart and Torosay Castles, both of which are reasonably interesting to visit although if I was writing a list of ten most interesting castles in Scotland I wouldn't consider either of them. This also involved a trip on Mull railway back to the ferry pier, which is a railway so small that to turn the train round at the end of the line the drivers gets out, pushes the engine to a turntable and turns it around by hand.
Other things of interest visited were McCaig's Folly, a large round arched thing overlooking Oban up a very steep hill (from being in Cambridge so long I appear to have let the muscles necessary to climb slopes fall out of use) which was apparently meant to be inspired by the Colosseum in Rome, although I can only assume McCaig had never actually seen the Colosseum but merely heard it described in a pub once. It is a good viewpoint, though. Also saw Castle Stalker a few miles up the coast, more familiar to some of you as the fearsome Castle Aaaaaargh at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sadly, it isn't open to the public (unlike the fascinating Doune Castle used for most of the rest of the castles in the film which I went round a few years ago).
Tomorrow I'll be visiting family in St Andrews, then I'll be going down to Cambridge on the train on Monday. After that it'll be back to work although I feel like I've been busy enough that I need another holiday to recover from the holiday.
The next day we went back to Mull and wandered round Duart and Torosay Castles, both of which are reasonably interesting to visit although if I was writing a list of ten most interesting castles in Scotland I wouldn't consider either of them. This also involved a trip on Mull railway back to the ferry pier, which is a railway so small that to turn the train round at the end of the line the drivers gets out, pushes the engine to a turntable and turns it around by hand.
Other things of interest visited were McCaig's Folly, a large round arched thing overlooking Oban up a very steep hill (from being in Cambridge so long I appear to have let the muscles necessary to climb slopes fall out of use) which was apparently meant to be inspired by the Colosseum in Rome, although I can only assume McCaig had never actually seen the Colosseum but merely heard it described in a pub once. It is a good viewpoint, though. Also saw Castle Stalker a few miles up the coast, more familiar to some of you as the fearsome Castle Aaaaaargh at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sadly, it isn't open to the public (unlike the fascinating Doune Castle used for most of the rest of the castles in the film which I went round a few years ago).
Tomorrow I'll be visiting family in St Andrews, then I'll be going down to Cambridge on the train on Monday. After that it'll be back to work although I feel like I've been busy enough that I need another holiday to recover from the holiday.
