Blogs from Isle of Mull, Argyll, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

With diesel prices on the mainland a little lower than on Skye, we filled the tank this morning and still gulped at the price. We’ll need to keep it filled now, with only a week left until we return the car in Manchester. Today we completed a zigzag drive past lochs and mountains to reach the departure point of the ferry to the Isle of Mull and thence to Tobermory where our hotel for the next three nights awaits. Highlights of the drive on this fine dry morning included reflections on the glassy waters of still lochs, where huge slopes of grass and heather plunged down to the edge and autumn colours tinged the foliage lining the road. At Glenfinnan we stopped near the edge of the loch to look at a monument commemorating the Jacobite ... read more

As per usual we take our time hitting the road with John and Ingrid questioning whether we have left our departure time too late to be able to see The Isle of Mull. The weather has again changed and we are bathed by a warm and sunny sky. From the lodge we head a couple of kilometres north and take the free Corran car ferry across the loch, turning left we wind our way towards Lochaline where we will catch another car ferry to the small port of Salen on the Isle of Mull. It is easy to underestimate how long driving in this area will take. Most of the roads are nothing more than single tracked lanes with passing bays strategically placed every hundred meters or so. It doesn’t take us long to understand the ... read more

A role in Balamory, a BBC children’s programme about a small Scottish community, has seen Tobermory become a popular choice for visitors to Scotland. The real Tobermory, on the north-east tip of Mull, is a lovely place to spend a day or two; it is a small town of friendly people, brightly-coloured craft shops, and cafes that whip locally-caught seafood into delicious meals. It has been my favourite Scottish town since I was a child. While my family stocked up on food in the Co-op supermarket I used to meander from shop to shop, where the gifts were as unmistakeably Scottish as the sea spray blowing across the street outside. This year I took a walk along Main Street with my camera, and tried to capture the harbour’s colour and charm. Tobermory is as unique and ... read more

The Isle of Mull is an island in the Inner Hebrides, a few miles from the coast of western Scotland. On its northernmost point lies Tobermory, an adorable port town which is the setting for the BBC children’s program ‘Balamory’; at the very south of the island, generations of Scottish kings are buried at Iona Abbey. Between its heralded tips are forty square miles of raw nature: tranquil lochs, moody glens and rugged marshland that are dashing even under grey skies. My family has travelled to Mull since the 1960s. My grandparents made friends in Tobermory after a chance trip away from the mainland, and came back with their four children year after year. In the seventies my mum worked at a pony trekking centre in her school holidays; in the eighties she and her three ... read more

This will be a very short entry in terms of text, as a few of my readers were actually with me for this particular journey. but I really liked a few of the pictures that I took on Iona, and thought it would be a shame to keep them out of the rest of my travels. In short: My family came to visit me in Scotland the week after I had returned from Spain. Chronologically this entry should be placed between Spain and Paris, but where on earth would the fun be in that? After my return from Spain I took a day off to do laundry and other such errands before I went to meet them on the Isle of Mull off the western coast. Mull is one of the largest islands in Scotland, and ... read more