Adventure to the Isle of Mull

Day 1 - Traveling to Oban and Mull 

Being our last weekend before classes started, Maddie and I decided to take advantage of the (somewhat) warm weather and plan a trip to the Isle of Mull, a little island off the western coast of Scotland.  We left at around 8:15 a.m. on Friday and the morning was a very groggy one of rolling out of bed, packing food for the weekend, and wandering around a foggy Glasgow looking for our bus stop.  As can be expected of the Scottish wilderness, the scenery on the way over was stunning – rolling hills, leaves turning colors, ribbons of creeks and waterfalls, and mist mist mist.

After a three-hour ride, we arrived in Oban just before lunchtime.  Oban is a very small and cute seaside town that’s natural smell is one of salt and fish and chips.  I always feel very smitten with the ocean and therefore wanted to stay longer in Oban, but alas we had to board the ferry that was taking us to Mull.  The ferry was very large and spacious and had plenty of room to snuggle up in inside, but I wanted to sit on the deck so that I could watch the waves and Oban disappear behind us.  It was frigid standing up top, but I’m so happy I did, because during the 45-minute boat ride I saw a seal dipping about in the waves, a couple of dolphins, several neighboring isles and hills, and Duart Castle materialize on the shoreline as we made our way into Mull’s ferry terminal.

Duart Castle as seen from the ferry to Isle of Mull

Once we had gotten off the ferry, Maddie and I loaded ourselves with our bags and began our half-mile trek to the seaside hostel we’d be staying at in Craignure. We felt so thrifty and empowered marching straight on past the buses and strings of tourists forking their money over to get to their more comfortable, albeit more expensive, lodgings.  As we were walking, we spotted blackberries on the beach, so we stopped and filled one of our empty lunch Tupperwares to the brim with the sticky little fruits, laughing the entire time at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.  Two friends spending a blustery Scottish afternoon picking wild blackberries on the shoreline of the Isle of Mull – we don’t live such bad lives…

We then checked into our little hostel.  The first thing I thought of when I saw it was a commune where hippies live.  It consisted of a smattering of little white tents speckling the hillside.  Inside each tent were a little brick hearth, two cots, questionably stained bedding, and a threadbare rug (okay so it wasn't *that* bad but the online description’s use of the word “carpeted” was a little generous).  Further up on the hillside were more tents that housed some sinks and showers for dishes and bathing.  As janky as it all was, I did find it pretty cute.

Maddie's and my tent

my cozy little cot 

After we got settled in, we made plans to spend the afternoon visiting Tobermory, the town that houses 2/3 of the isle’s population in brightly colored seafront houses.  We waited patiently at the bus station only for our bus to never come.  Confused and quite chilly, we found a tourist information center to inquire about the bus schedule.  As it turns out, the bus schedule we had based our weekend plans on was the summer schedule and they were now operating on their autumn times.  No more busses were coming that afternoon.  Oops.

So there we were, stranded in Craignure, home to hippie commune tent village, some blackberries, ominous rainclouds, and not a whole lot else – not the best place to be spontaneous.  We stood in the rain deliberating what to do and after going through a rather diminutive and bleak list of options – walking (in the rain), renting bikes and exploring (in the rain), sitting on a park bench and reading (in the rain) – we turned around and boarded the next ferry back to Oban.  It seemed like a ridiculous course of action since we had just been there, but I can’t help but love those decisions that seem so illogical but are still exactly what you want to do.

So once we were back in Oban, we wandered around waiting for a socially acceptable time to eat dinner and comparing prices at different restaurants, trying to find a place that sold more than just fish and chips.  It turns out that the seafood capital of Scotland is not the best place to be a vegetarian.  We eventually found me some pasta and sat down to dine.  After supper, we got ice cream and with the company of many seagulls, a couple of ducks, and even a swan, watched the sun set on the pier.  We then sat at the ferry terminal for 20 minutes only to have the exact same bus fiasco happen – we were attempting to operate off the summer schedule but soon realized our next ferry wouldn’t come until 11 in the evening.  At least Oban is pretty at night…

Oban's boats and buildings at nighttime 

We resigned ourselves to wander around Oban some more, but everything was closed except for fish and chips joints and pubs.  So we chose a small cellar pub to visit, purchased a half pint of the cheapest beer we could find, and sat down to watch the football/soccer game and see just how long we could nurse our drinks before being asked to buy another.  Our first half hour there was very uneventful and slightly awkward.  If somebody were to take a snapshot of the scene we had immersed ourselves in, presented it to a random person, and asked, “What doesn’t belong here?” let’s just say he or she would not have chosen the grizzled war vet, thickly-accented bartender, or either of the two ruffians playing pool in the corner and choosing aggressive Scottish drinking tunes on the jukebox.  At least we were getting to know the locals right?

notice outside of the cellar bar

The atmosphere quickly changed, however, when a gang of Scottish teenagers rolled in with their last names embroidered on their upturned collars and the most ludicrous haircuts I have ever seen.  They began speaking very loudly in unintelligible slang and harassing the bartender for drinks even though half of them were clearly underage.  Maddie and I melted into the background, no longer concerned about attracting attention, and prepared ourselves to behold what was quickly becoming a bizarre hybrid episode of Skins and The Jersey Shore.  We spent the rest of the evening there with smiles on our lips and flat beer in our glasses. 

We finally made our way back to Mull on our ferry and walked back to our tent in the pouring rain.  Since we were planning to wake up quite early the next morning to go visit the Isle of Iona, we decided to take showers that night, which turned out to be one of the coldest and most miserable experiences of my life.  There was no hot water and the faucets were automatic – I felt like such a masochist punching the knob every 20 seconds to voluntarily douse myself in ice water.  Brrrr! We then did our best to bundle up and fall asleep to the sound of rain hammering on our canvas roof.

Day 2 - Isle of Iona

During my freshman year at Dartmouth, at each floor meeting, my undergraduate advisor would have each of us share what we considered the high and low of our week.  Now if somebody were to have me do the same with this trip, my low would definitely would have been Saturday morning.

Damp. So incredibly damp. My hair was damp, my covers were damp…even the pound notes in my wallet were wilted from the moisture.  Getting dressed was like slipping back into a bathing suit you had peeled off earlier and our fresh baguette had been transformed into an oblong sponge.  This was not the worst fate our food suffered however.  What hadn’t become a wet and pulpy mess had been infiltrated by various critters during the night.  Earwigs in our granola.  Slugs in our blackberries.  It was a grim morning.

Yet, unwilling to be deterred by the bugs and drizzle, Maddie and I wriggled into our soggy jeans, nibbled at what was salvageable of the food, pulled ourselves up by the straps of our Wellies, and marched through the puddles out onto the main road to catch the bus that would take us to Fiohnphort…only to watch it, ten minutes early, zoom right past us and around the bend at the end of the road.

However, this is the point where our melancholy tale turns around. The bus driver must have caught our expressions of sheer American desperation as he whizzed by because a few moments later we watched the cumbersome vehicle lumber back around the corner in reverse and stop directly in front of us. Hooray for Scottish kindliness!  And so began what turned out to be a magnificent day at the Isle of Iona.

laundry drying outside on the Isle of Iona

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but Maddie and I didn’t have the slightest awareness of the historical and religious significance of Iona when we first decided to take our daytrip.  Yet once we exited our ferry and began wandering around the island in the early hours of the morning, watching the sunlight creep across the Sound of Iona and shed light on the wee island, we began to get the feeling that there was certainly a reason why being on Iona made us feel so peaceful.

To be brief, as many of you much better educated people may already know this, the Isle of Iona is basically the place where Christianity in Great Britain and Ireland originated.  Somewhere around the end of the 6^th century. Yeah. Pretty darn impressive.  The rich religious history of the place is a tangible one, as you can actually walk around the ruins of a 13^th-century Augustine nunnery, a 13^th-century Benedictine abbey, and an ancient cemetery that contains the graves of numerous Scottish kings, including Malcolm and Macbeth (I was especially excited about this).  It’s absolutely unreal.

 the most complete remnant of a medieval nunnery in Scotland

About 150 people live on the island, most of them members of an ecumenical Christian group called the Iona Community.  At first I found this a little creepy, but the sense of community and companionship they’ve built there is truly amazing.  And I suppose it’s difficult not to feel spiritual when you live in a place that looks like this:

shoreline of Iona

We ended up spending nearly the entire day on Iona just meandering – it’s a place that lends itself nicely to walking slowly and taking several breaks to stop and sigh.  We even got to know some of the locals, mainly really relaxed looking sheep and a persistent little cat that was intent on us sharing our couscous with him.  I named him Penry.

kitty nom nom nom

Before we had to board our ferry back to Mull, we just sat on the beach and soaked it all in.  If there is anything to make you feel very small and so at peace, it is quietly sitting in the sunshine on a white sandy beach of an island off of another island off the coast of Scotland (which I suppose is itself part of another island).  Leaving was unfortunate, but once we got back to our tent village we discovered that when not drenched in rain, Craignure is not only tolerable, but positively charming. One benefit of Scotland's bipolar weather patterns is that they make for excellent rainbows and we saw the most fabulous one stretched across the sky right as the ferry from Oban was coming in.

this picturesque moment has been brought to by
water, sunshine, and the ridiculousness of Scotland

We had planned to spend the rest of the night in our tent reading, but the evening was too beautiful not to be outside, so we walked to a convenience store, bought ice cream bars, and sat on the rocky shore, watching the ferry travel back across the water and skipping stones into the sunset.  All and all, not a bad day. 

goodnight Craignure

Day 3 – Attempts to Hike and Torosay Castle

Maddie’s and my plan for our third and final day on the Isle of Mull included a grand scheme to do what we had originally gone away for the weekend to do: hike! After talking to some locals, we decided on a hike that was apparently not only a short walk from our hostel, but also “quite trekky.” So we laced up our sneakers, set off for the trailhead, and began hiking! The first hour was very promising.  Most of the trail was straight uphill and filled with many lovely waterfalls.  We seemed to be following a stream up into the mountains. Perfect!

Scotland is pretty

However, after only about ten minutes after our encounter with the stream, the trail began to curve away from the mountains and back downhill.  Very confused, we backtracked to the last sign we had passed to make sure we were going the right direction. We were.  So we decided to just keep following the path down and hope that it turned back toward our pretty mountain again. It never did.  We ended up right back where we had started, staring stupidly at a sign that expressed its hopes that we had enjoyed Craignure’s 5-kilometer hiking loop and would visit again soon. That was it.  Maddie, leading force in Dartmouth’s Cabin and Trail, and I, Miss Colorado State Pride were pretty disappointed.  Apparently attending a college where walking on the Appalachian Trail for 50 miles straight without stopping for sleep is not only considered normal, but enjoyable, turns you into a pair of hiking snobs.

We considered bushwhacking on up the mountain anyway, but decided that might be bad form, so we trudged back to the tourist information center to consider our options.  After surreptitiously rifling through some guidebooks and consulting some maps we didn’t want to have to pay for, we decided to walk about a mile and half up the road to visit Torosay Castle and Gardens, which turned out to be an excellent decision.

view of Torosay Castle from one of the many backyards -
it seriously looks like a set for a Shakespearean play

Torosay Castle was built in 1858 and people still live it in, so obviously we couldn’t tour inside, however much we wanted to.  We could, however, take plenty of pictures of the imposing mansion from the outside as well as explore the garden and grounds, which were delightful and extensive. 

view of the tiered backyard

I had just finished reading Rebecca so I felt as if I had been directly transplanted into the setting of Daphne du Maurier’s novel.  The castle and grounds had everything it needed to be Manderley – the wild woods, the blue azaleas, the sounds of the sea, and the haunting feeling of secrets.  Coincidentally, when I was looking up the history of Torosay online later that evening I discovered that du Maurier’s older sister, Angela, had actually visited Torosay in the 1930s when her companion Olive Guthrie became a widow. Go figure!

Since we had nothing better to do after we had seen everything there was to see of Torosay, Maddie and I took our shoes off, stretched out in the grass, and took an afternoon nap.  It was a very relaxing afternoon.  And for those of you who know Nigel, he also thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Nigel and Maddie soak up the sun

And as must always happen with great adventures, we eventually had to pack up and head back across the water to Oban and back through the winding roads to Glasgow.  But hopefully we shall meet again someday Isle of Mull!

another sunset photo - taken on the bus ride home

For more pictures of the Isle of Mull, here ya go! A lot of them look the same, but it's hard not to take a lot of photos when you're in a beautiful place!

Isle of Mull Adventure