Around Mull

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AROUND MULL

1. Staffa & Treshnish Isles Wildlife Tour.

At 10.00am on an overcast Sunday morning we stepped aboard our cruise boat together with about 30 other people, looking forward to seeing puffins for the first time. We had booked this cruise before we left to make sure we had a space on the boat, but we could just have arrived and it would have been OK. The weather didn’t look too promising, windy and showery, but our captain reassured us, promising that the showers would stop and we’d have fine weather shortly and he was right.

The boat sailed out towards two small islands, Coll and Tiree, stopping along the way to look at some bottle nosed dolphins. They were spotted near a group of gannets who were feeding on a shoal of fish. The dolphins came over briefly to say hello, but they were much too busy doing their own thing, fishing, to have much time to interact with us, so they left soon after.

It took us over two hours to get to the wildlife paradise of Lunga, of sailing past light houses, green hills, farms and isolated crofts. Lunga is the largest of the Treshnish Islands, where there is a large Puffin Colony nesting in old rabbit burrows at the edge of a cliff on a grassy hillside. These birds are very tame and inquisitive and came within a few metres of us. There was an incredible number and diversity of birds, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, shags, and a seal colony.

The experience of being amongst these birds was marvelous. Watching them fly, come in to their nests with fish and seeing them in their thousands bobbing up and down in the sea was a sight to behold. The two hours we spent there went too fast and we had to go back onto the pontoon and move on to Staffa. It was there we saw Fingal’s Cave, made famous by Felix Mendelssohn, in his “Hebrides Overture” (Fingal Cave). It rises 227 feet and is made of hexagonal jointed basalt. It is a wonder of the world and we were able to go ashore here for an hour or so and explore the cave. There is a walkway, just above high water level to get access and it just like going into a Cathedral except it is naturally made. It was fabulous.

When we got back, we had a lovely meal with people we met on the tour. Scottish seafood cooking is great, I had crab and garlic scallops, yum.

2. Over to Iona

We planned to go to Iona on Monday, but buses don't go very often and there was only one bus at 6.45 from Tobermory that would get us there before the tourists, so off we went, walking down the hill and got on together with 3 others who had the same plan. It is 40 miles from Tobermory to Craignure and the bus takes an hour to get there. We then had to catch another bus from Craignure to the ferry on the other side of the island to go over to Iona. This bus took an hour and a half, so there was a lot of travelling to get there. We were told to catch the 3.00pm ferry back, so we would be able to catch the last bus back to Craignure for our return trip.

We were tired from the early start, so when we got to Iona, we decided to sit in the café overlooking the harbor and have a cup of coffee and enjoy some home baking. It was amazing that during the bus trip the sun had come out, so we had another sunny day ahead of us.

First of all we saw the medieval Nunnery for the woman of Iona said to be the best preserved in the British Isles. Next we headed for the Abbey itself with its tall standing crosses which had been designed and made there. We took an audio tour, which gave information about the history of the place and reconstructed life as it would have been for pilgrims of the time. We wandered around and saw the chapel and the cloister and the various parts of the Abbey. The Abbey had been largely rebuilt in the early 1900's as not much of the original remained. We learnt that the Book of Kells had been written there and was taken to Kells in Ireland for safe keeping during the Viking invasions.

The island is pretty and we had a good look around before catching the bus back for the long haul back.

When we got back to Tobermory we had dinner in the town before going up to see a Mendelssohn concert in the Parish Church. We were too tired to see all of it, so left at interval for an early night and a well deserved sleep before having to pack up and leave in the morning.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Puffins
We love Puffins. Great photo. We saw them in the Faroe Islands. Love it.