Hotspur.us

Our original plan back when this trip started was to go to Islay after Edinburgh. I really wanted to visit the Laugavulin distillery, mostly so I could get a photo there and send it to my brother. Unfortunately there’d been a rumor of a possible stike by the ferry operators and you kinda need a ferry to get there. Which brings us to today and our trip to the Isle of Mull. Since it was sunny and blazing hot, we decided to sit on the top deck and take in the scenery on the ride.

Once we made port I was taken aback. There’s pretty much nothing there – a tourist information place, a coffee house and a charity shop. That’s it. In the port where the car ferry docks. Well, that and buses. Lots of buses. To take you to the part of Mull where there is actual stuff – Tobermory, which is about 30 minutes away. Okay.

Now Tobermory is an adorable little town, but the port can’t accommodate the car ferry. Hence the probably lucrative bus business at the car ferry port.

It was still blazing hot and nary a cloud in the sky, something for which we weren’t really very prepared. And by that I mean we had on jeans and I wanted to die. Someone give me some scissors, please!

What’s the first thing we do? We go exploring on a walking trail. Because even though it’s blazing hot and we’re wearing jeans, that’s how we roll.

It was a lovely walk with seriously charming views of the harbor. At one point we came across a little waterfall and stream that could have been plucked out of the Monongahela National Forest and would not have looked out of place.

Next up: Tour of Tobermory Distillery. We lucked out and had a small group, 6 of us and our guide, which was good because it’s a wee little distillery.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to take photos during the tour. Bummer. The tour was interesting, and blazing hot because you need heat to make whisky. I also learned that the shapes of the stills determine the type of whisky. And the stunning stills at Tobermory looked very much like the lamp from “I Dream of Jeanie”.

We didn’t buy any whisky, can you imagine if that broke inside our suitcase?

But we did get a baseball cap for Chad and a toboggan for me, which, you know, seemed like a ridiculous purchase on a day that was hotter than the surface of the sun. Turns out it was a brilliant purchase, because by the day’s end it was foolishly cold and I ended up wearing it!

We did grab a single cache on Mull. It was a nano on a (defunct, obviously) water mine. Plus I saw this….I only wish I’d seen an actual otter.

We just missed the next to the last bus, which meant we had some time to kill. We got ice cream and sat and watched the harbor.

And then hung out and read. It was starting to get chilly as we waited.

At the end of a long day we were back at the ferry port of Oban and heading to our car. As we rounded the corner I could hear bagpipes. And I said to Chad, that’s not one, there’s not one, there are several. We looked up and there was a guy facing the wall playing, tuning up really. Ok. So big deal, this is Scotland we’ve learned that stuff really does happen here. Then we walked into the car park and hello! It was a pipe band warming up. They were everywhere. Including one guy who was right beside our car. Oh Scotland, you do not disappoint.

Check out the rest of the photos below. Clicking on the tiny photo will bring up full sized images.

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