Full Metal Wheelbarrow

I thought it was about time I deluged you with the rest of my holiday pics, which for some reason, I just haven't got round to...

     Back from hols, have seen otters and a possible whale and have nearly 500 photos  to bung on the puter, so it may take some time to post any!

Will try to catch up eventually!

If I haven't replied to something you might have expected me to in the last week, it's because I've been away on the glorious Isle of Mull, and very nice it was too.

In other words, we am back from our holidaze.

Normal blethering, interspersed with photos of Hielan' Coos, with be resumed as soon as we find a spade with which to dig our way through the junk mail carpeting the hall.

Quite a few pictures in this one, so I'll put it under a cut to prevent the annihilation of innocent friend's lists :-)

Also, I was about to start typing this and it suddenly occurred to me, that although this was a cycling holiday, I hadn't picked a single picture with a trike in it to post. What a twit!

hooloovoo_42 was quite correct and there was indeed a wireless network at the skool where we were staying last week. Alas, because it was a skool,  the network had nanny software up the wazoo, to the extent that it wouldn't let me access the LJ posting page because it had too many "weighted phrases". No, I dunno, either.

Anyway, today we have mostly been cleaning trikes, as most of them went over the rather damp, sandy and salty causeway to Lindisfarne at least once and salt and sand are doubleplusungood for chains and gears and the like.

Later I shall witter on at length about the holiday and bombard you with as many photos as I can get LJ to upload, but just now I am somewhat knackered and CBA, so I'm off the allotment to see if there are any strawberries left.

Right, this should be the last batch of Mull stuff, after which we will return to your irregularly scheduled wibble...

Thursday's Expotition was a driving tour to try to spot otters and/or eagles. We set off from Torosay and trundled along the banks of Loch Spelve, stopping in various places to watch for wildlife. On one of the first stops, Rob got told off by a sheep... It was a black-faced lamb, looking eerily like Shaun the Sheep and it toddled up to within a few yards of his open window, fixed him with a disapproving look and said "MAAAA!" very firmly. To make sure he'd got his point across, he added "MAAAA!" even more firmly and then toddled off, secure in the knowledge that he'd Jolly Well Told Him.

A bit further down Loch Spelve, I'm as sure as I can be that I saw a sea eagle - huge black raptor with a white tail, the latter being the giveaway. Unfortunately Rob has difficulty spotting things against the sky, and I wasn't able to point it out to him before it had gone, much less get a photo.

We carried on past the end of Loch Spelve and on to Loch Buie, which is completely different in character - Loch Spelve has low flat beaches with good sightlines, while Loch Buie is rockier and has lots of rhododendrons - very pretty, but not nearly as good from a wildlife-spotting perspective.

If I haven't mentioned it previously, most of the roads on Mull are single track with passing places. So we had to stop in one and wait a while when we met a herd of Hielan' Coos coming in the opposite direction


At the end of Loch Buie is Moy Castle where we were hoping for a teashop  but all we found there was a large garden shed with what seemed like a rather dubious claim to being a Post Office (It did open not long after we got there though and sold us ice lollies, which was some consolation) a beach, a small campsite and a castle covered in scaffolding.



On the way back to the van we saw a trio of fallow deer, but again, neither of us had the gumption to take a picture. Bah.

So here's one of Ben Buie instead.



We then did a trundle around Glen More, had lunch at the Pennyghael Hotel and circled back via Salen, but alas, saw no otters, despite finding the spot where we saw one last year. We did see some ravens there though and we'd had fun watching a bunch of Brent geese with little fluffy goslings.

I must also report that while some bits of the route from Craignure to the Ulva ferry are a touch hairy, the route from Pennyghael to Salen is considerably worse to drive (although very picturesque).

On Friday we decided to walk around the bay to Duart Castle, which turned out to be a fair bit further than it looked, although it still only took us about an hour, because it was all on tarmac. We could probably have done it a bit faster if we hadn't had to keep a close watch for traffic and keep letting it past.




The chaffinches were amazingly brave - the dark bit in the corner of the photo is Rob's sleeve to give some idea of how close to us they'd get - and some of them would "buzz" us if they felt they weren't getting enough crumbs!

Other birds would come up or crumbs too - there was a Great Tit and what I think was a Coal Tit, but the chaffinches were the bravest by far.

Later in the evening, it was raining on the mainland but sunny where we were and took this shot of the resulatant rainbow :-

One of the best holidays I've had. I'm really looking forward to going back next year.

A couple of random shots from our walk into Craignure on Tuesday afternoon :-



On the Wednesday of last week, we went out for a days walking on Ulva which is a short (literally a minute or so) ferry trip from Mull. The ferry works by the simple expedient of slidng a board across to show a red patch so the ferryman knows to come and fetch you. Cunningly, they don't take money from you on the outward trip, but you have to buy a ticket to get back :-)

We'd planned to do one of the circular paths in the morning, have lunch and then go out again, but the path we chose, out to Livingstone's Croft,  turned out to be a lot longer than we'd realised and we didn't get our lunch until after 2pm, by which time we were a bit tired and elected to call it a day and went back to the cottage to watch the oystercatchers and gulls on the beach.


It rained a bit during the walk, but we didn't mind - and it turned out to be the worst weather of the week, which was little short of miraculous.

I was going to post the Thursday and Friday pictures tonight, but I've been having a bit of a fight with LJ so I'll do those tomorrow. There may be outbreaks of Hielan' Coos.

We did get on the ferry eventually on Saturday, although it was a long and stressful wait. So much so that we had to go and have hot chocolate at the Oban Chocolate Company at one point.

We finally got to our holiday cottage at about 7pm, so we didn't have a chance to look around a huge amount on our first day, but then we didn't really need to, considering the view out of the front windows involves a beach and a castle...




We did trundle along the path in front of the cottage a bit and found a jetty - the cottage used to be the ferryman's cottage, so presumably this was where he ferried from - a boathouse and set of steps up to a headland where there was a big stone Celtic Cross that caught the sunlight rather nicely





And in the other direction was the railway station for the Torosay end of the small steam railway that runs between there and Craignure. It's only a mile or so of track, but has the distinction of being the only railway on the island. On Sunday we walked into Craignure along the coast path past the Celtic Cross (the railway station lady was horrified when we told her this) and came back on the train for a treat.



On Sunday afternoon we toddled around the gardens of Torosay Castle.

I took a lot of photos, but I'll try not to bombard you with too many of them. We really liked the gardens - they seemed to have just the right mix of formal and informal and some really nice plants. Not to mention a couple of rather droll stone lions. Alas, my photos of the Blue Himalayan poppies were not as good as I'd hoped.

But you've got to love a place that has Hielan' Coos at the bottom of the garden :-)


Right, this has taken ages, so more will have to wait for another post. Next time there will be owls. And possibly puffins.

A ray of hope in the ferry situation - Rob emailed the lady we're renting the cottage from, who had understandably wanted to know which ferry we'd be arriving on, and explained the situation to her. She replied that we'll more than likely be able to get on the ferry on Saturday as a lot of people book but don't turn up. Which is bad of them but good for us :-)

Rob has just phoned up to book the ferry to Mull for our holiday. They're full. Bugger.

We're currently on the waiting list for a standby ticket :-(

We have a Plan B, which is to park the van in the free long-term car park, go across as foot passengers and then come back for the van on Sunday, but that's not without its problems either, since the ferries back on the following Saturday are mostly full too - except the 7.20am one for which there may be standby tickets.

I suppose we should have booked further ahead, but we didn't realise there'd be so much demand on a Saturday evening. Bother.