We enjoyed our wee road trip to Oban, stopping at a couple of castles and viewpoints along the way.
Oban is a lovely seaside town but we really only had the chance to visit it for the evening as we had plans on the Isle of Mull the next day. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that we should have booked our ferry in advance. They were sold out until 6pm, so we had to pivot! We ended up getting up really early to drive about 2 hours to another ferry crossing.
We arrived to Mull in good time and had a glorious bluebird day for our drive across the island. Remember how Rob improved his left hand stick shift driving on the left side of the road? Now he can add this to his driving resume: single track roads with blind corners and surprise sheep on the road!
We’re staying in the town of Dervaig, which is about 4 miles of winding hairpin turns from Calgary! Of course we had to go there and it is (of course) nothing like our Canadian sprawling city. This Scottish Calgary boasts one of Scotland’s best white sand beaches.
We spent an afternoon in Tobermory, browsing along its colourful waterfront shops.
Our main reason for coming to the Isle of Mull was for a special boat trip. It left from the Isle of Iona which is one of the oldest religious centres in Western Europe. Its abbey was built in 563 AD.
Our boat tour took us to the Isle of Staffa, which is well known for its basalt columns and the famous Fingal’s Cave. In 1829 the composer Mendelssohn visited the island and wrote The Hebrides after hearing the sound of the waves crashing deep in the cave.
The cave is spectacular and definitely reason to visit this island, but the main draw for us was to try to see some of the puffins that nest on the grassy side of the island. We were lucky enough to see hundreds of puffins, many as close as one metre away from us. Both Rob and I fell in love with these curious little guys. They aren’t very good at flying (they’re masters at swimming and diving) so watching and hearing them land on the grass was especially endearing. Sorry not sorry for the onslaught of puffin pictures.
Tomorrow we take a ferry back to the mainland and head toward the area of Loch Ness. Could Nessie be as puffin awesome?