Mull … falling in love again

Tobermory

Like Orkney, it took us a day or so to warm up to Mull. We’d visited eight years previously and both remember loving it. But the campsite we’d booked into was damp, the weather was just passable and it all looked busy again. 

look closely … a wallet on the shore!

Staying on the east of the island we drove to Loch Spelve where Sam had found the wallet in Unsuspecting Hero, and then on to Loch Buie where she’d contemplated her life. We walked for three miles to Moy castle and beyond and, in a couple of hours of silence lost in my own thoughts, the plot for the whole of book 8 came to me in a way which has never happened before. It was almost a biblical event … and I remember the detail now, a few days later. Spooky, hey?

Chuffed that I’d done the Sam Green excursion, we made our way back to the campsite where, with no data signal and poor WiFi, we had an early night.

Like our camping experience, it was all getting a bit murky

The next morning C checked her Instagram and let me know that old blogging pals, the Baxters, who’d we’d met on our original 8-month pan Europe trip in 2014, were on the next campsite down. We got in touch and semi-arranged to meet up. We then drove the northeast of the island, stopping for a 5-miler along Loch Ba – in the shadows of Ben More – avoiding the showers. Still non-plussed with the island we drove the long way home around the Ardemeanagh peninsula … and, wow.

but, wow. There’s a road the bottom of them cliffs

For a couple of miles the road is carved from the base of a huge cliff, with little to stop you driving off and joining the dolphins. The route over the peninsular to the other shore is equally as spectacular as are the dark colours of the massive rock faces when you curve your way between back to the north of the island. It is all pretty spectacular. Back late(ish), and full of adrenaline after the drive, I cooked more simple food and we had another early night. 

On Monday, on advice from Mary, we took a boat trip to Staffa and Fingal’s cave. C always takes the lead here as I’m genetically modified not to spend money … and yet, post these trips, I always think it’s worth it (even the $300 it cost us in The Bahamas for a day trip to the islands to have our toes chewed on by a set of rays). The boat didn’t leave until the afternoon, so we drove first to Fidden campsite where Sam’s van was torched (gain in Unsuspecting Hero). It is, alas, now closed, but I still breathed in the same air and stared across at Iona as Sam had done at the beginning of her now 7-book series. 

wow

By the time we got to the boat both of us were at the end of our ‘everything’s a bit damp, the weather looks like it’s going to stay poor, and three weeks is a long time in a tent’ episode. But, do you know what? The boat trip was fab. We sat on a slab of raised carpet at the back of the boat (it was full = about 40 people at £30  time is a nice littel earner) driven by two lovely blokes who took us to see some seals, where C got her seal recognition badge: one grey and two harbour. Tick. They all look like aqua-Labradors to me). Then we drove through a pool of dolphins, before we made it to Staffa. Which was fab. You get into Fingal’s cave via a pretty dodgy walkway which only has a few more years before Climate Change hands it back to the fish. It is something special, for sure. And the top of the island was equally as interesting, even in amongst the odd light shower.

Battling 2 metre swells in a boat which looked designed for Windermere, we made it back safely, drove home … only to find an older woman in an Audi A6 estate had pitched her tent clearly onto our land. Typically British, we apologised for parking our car too close to her tent … and she said, ‘it’s not a problem … tonight’. And then she spent the next hour staring at us. Hurrumph. But, the site’s WiFi had improved and we watched the end of the latest Cinderella, which I loved – whilst Rebecca, who knows these things, told me it was rubbish and I must have been mistaken. She’s a musical snob that daughter of ours …

Fab catch up with the Baxters!

On Tuesday we popped along to the adjacent campsite and had a fry-up breakfast with Sandra and Iain Baxter, pals we met when we originally went travelling. Theirs is a long and fascinating story, the short version of which is that, even though Sandra still works, over the past 8 years they’ve travelled for much longer and much further than us. It was a real fillup – and an inspiration – to meet up with them again, and a couple of hours passed in an instant. We bade farewells and then, after another cross-island hike (it takes forever to get anywhere on Mull, even in a car) made our way down a little used valley with the aim of walking 8 miles on a coastal path to a natural arch. We got just over a mile when the terrain (and advice from a local) beat us. It was more of a scramble than a walk … and too much for us.

Disappointed, we walked in the other direction, which was much easier. And (on Instagram advice from Sandra B) spotted the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship which was passing between Mull and Jura. What a monster! Fab.

By the end of the day, we were close to sorting out the next seven days or so. The wind and rain, the darker and colder nights, have reinforced the view that we’re coming to the end of our tent odyssey. More by way of a summary from me in a while but, for now, we’ve booked in to C’s Army friends, Gary and Ruth tomorrow night for a couple of nights, and then we’re off for a cuppa with another friend of hers in Dundee … after which we have booked into a hotel for an evening! It’s a celebration of all things tenting. We think we deserve it. And then home via mum’s and Mary’s. After all, I have  book to write.

cooking in the lea of the car …

Stay safe.