At Christmas I took a trip to see my parents in Scotland again, you can see snaps from previous visits here and check out general Scotland rambles here. For the uninitiated; my parents live on the Isle of Mull and I absolutely fuckin’ love it there. This is part one of a two part series, and concentrates on the days over Christmas, before my friends came up for New Years. That will be following after I finally get around to doing my first recipe post of the year.
So I’ve just returned from a week at my parent’s on the Isle of Mull, just off of Scotland’s west coast. I followed it up with a couple of days in Edinburgh which I’ll be posting about later this week. The days off were very much needed. Despite a last minute break I had between jobs (when I went to Berlin), this was my first proper chunk of time off since Chicago last September (I don’t understand how that’s been a year) and with moving 4 times (soon to be 5) since then, I was starting to get burnt out. I had a lot of time to myself so the trip took in cycling, running and walks from the house, as well as a trip to the picturesque Iona plus a heap of cooking and baking (go see my biscuits here). It was rounded off by a walk along cliffs (including a clamber down a rusty ladder) to see the remains of a fossil tree. I’m simply going to let the photos speak for the rest of the trip:
Early on the Sunday morning of my trip to see my parents on the Isle of Mull at Easter (see parts one and two) I woke up to see my Aunt & Uncle off for their ferry. We were also thinking about a couple of different walks we could perhaps fit into the day, planning low lying ones to avoid the rain. Little did we imagine that on opening the curtains we’d be greeted with an absolutely stunning view across the Loch with a thin band of low lying cloud leaving the peaks clear.
We Are The Mulligang: Pt. 1
Well, what an eventful couple of weeks. Last week I wasn’t home for longer than a couple of sleeping hours each day. I played football, went to a gig, my sister’s husband’s stag do, their practise meal and then their wedding. It was all fairly hectic, especially as I had work in between. I’ll do a proper post about their wedding at a later date, when I have photos etc to share with you all. Needless to say, it was fun and my sister looked incredible. Congratulations to the both of them and I wish their continued happiness well into the future.
Anyway, that turned into a longer ramble than I intended. The morning after their wedding, I had to force myself up early once again. This was, however, so that I could get picked up by the Derby lot to head north to my parent’s holiday let on the Isle of Mull (the one I’ve mentioned a lot). I finally had a chance to show my friends why I loved this place. So they could live what I’d talked at them about far too much over the last few years. The drive was long, Leeds to Oban on a good day being 5-7 hours. We did of course, hit traffic and as soon as we got near Glasgow, the rain began. And I don’t just mean rain. I mean torrential downpour. It held up all the way from Glasgow to Oban. Making for a, shall we say, atmospheric drive.
As much as the scenery was still beautiful in the rain, it did fill me with a slight sense of dread. What if I finally got to show these places to my friends, and all they saw was grey and miserable?
The weather ended up causing our ferry to be delayed. However while we were waiting the rain subsided. We had a mad dash around Oban Tesco for supplies before queuing for the delayed ferry. The crossing was nowhere near as bad as expected. Once we reached the other side the sun had started going well and truly down. Meaning that by the time we reached Loch Na Keal (the sea loch which the cottage is on) it was a bit on the dingey side, especially combined with the grey/cloud/rain. It mean that they didn’t get to see the glorious view I’d been hoping for.
Then when we woke up the next day, everything had changed. I will let these photographs tell the tale themselves. It did mean, however, that the darkness/bad weather had worked in our advantage. It meant they had never suspected that the views would be quite so stunning, or to quite that scale.
We started the day slowly, mainly due to the large amounts of travelling the day before. Then decided to visit Duart Castle, a place I’ve only been once before when I was much, much younger. It’s one of the island’s main tourist traps, and usually I’d not have paid in (and have just pottered about outside) but they had some Scottish marching bands and dancers performing so it made slightly more sense to do so this time around, and hey, who doesn’t love a castle?
That evening we decided to BBQ, so picked up some last minute supplies from the Spar in Salen, and bumped into one of the Hairy Bikers. Yup, really. He was driving a campervan. The second part of my post will follow soon.
There are more of these photos on my flickr. Have you ever been to Scotland? Tell me about your Scottish adventures below.