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Making our way down into Oban on the cycleway from Dunbeg was a real treat, smooth tarmac and brilliant sunshine. Is this to be the weather pattern for our last week? We hope so as we board the very busy ferry to Mull with everyone scrambling for a seat on the outer top deck, a phenomenon rarely seen during this last three weeks. Bill is familiar with Mull, having visited here for the last 30 years, so I guess I am down for a guided tour of every nook and cranny. By the way, Bill has got his shorts on and already three girls have fainted in a swoon. It is a big island so,we had better get cracking. Duart Castle was a nice place to settle on the lawn with a coffee and fresh scone. We are now seeing plenty of birds again with the lovely goldfinch, goldcrest, sedge warbler, willow warblers fighting, wood warblers, buzzards and the odd sea eagle. YES a SEA EAGLE. We went down to Grass Point, where the farmers used to send their cattle to swim across to the mainland, following them in a boat. When we got there we sawn a group of people
looking into a telescope and asked what hey had seen and were,amazed to have a look at the pair of sea eagles on the opposite side of the bay. Unfortunately, they were too far away to see with the naked eye but were quite clear in the lens. Since there are reputed to be about 12 pairs on Mull we live in hope that we may see more before we leave. I know,people who,have spent a half an hour in a ’hide’ and not seen them. The weather is still good at lunchtime in Craignure and I am considering getting down to one shirt. A steady ride in summer weather to Tobermory, with just two long climbs to do and we descend into the town. We meet a friend of Bill's who has had the Tobermory Corner Shop for 30 years and I was surprised to find that he is called Peter Dugdale and hails from Blackburn. I suspect he will be a distant cousin of mine since there was a branch of the family which went to Blackburn and Darwen perhaps 100 yrs ago. The B&B is very nice, although at the top of a very steep hill, and we are here with the window open at 6pm and no midges, unlike last night in Oban, where I was eaten alive whilst bringing in the washing. The perils of Scotland! The Hebridean Princess is in he quay tonight which, I may have told you, tours the islands at great expense to a limited number of passengers and is also used by the Queen and Royal Family when they are up in the islands. We saw it two weeks ago out at sea unloading passengers into a small boat to take them onto Tiree.
We haven't read the papers for three weeks and now Bill says that the world is in trouble, people keep dying. First it was Bob Hope and then it was Jonny Cash, then Steve Jobs and finally Jimmy Saville. That left us with no hope, no cash, no jobs and no one to fix it. So, ’Someone has to do it!’
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