July 10, 2013 - Tobermory, United Kingdom
We picked up the car on a cloudy morning, having walked, with our suitcases, backpacks and a large plastic bag of things to send home, the few blocks from the apartment. We were given a map and some verbal directions, but the navigator still managed to urge the driver to turn in the wrong direction at the wrong places. Fortunately the driver is now immune to the directions of the navigator and can read the street signs for himself.
Not far out of Glasgow the road runs beside Loch Lomond, but we found that trip rather disappointing. The trees and hedgerows between the loch and the road are so thick that there are very few view points, and the road has not been built with any stopping places to get a view. We did stop once, but not in the most picturesque place, and the resultant photos are pretty dreary. Not helped by the heavy cloud cover. The surface of the water was glassy calm, and there was a lucky wake-boarder making the best of it; miles and miles of fabulous ski-ing water and all to himself.
There are a few little towns on the edge of the loch, but even there the water is mostly obscured by the greenery. At Tarbert we glimpsed a few cruise boats and a caravan park, but not much activity. As we drove further north the clouds began to lift and we could see the edge of the Trossachs rearing up on the other side of the loch. At Crianlarich we saw a sign for tearooms on the railway station so we stopped for a salad roll and a cup of tea (railway coffee being best avoided anywhere on the planet). It is a real, operative railway station and there seemed to be an air of anticipation amongst the few staff, two of whom were leaning on a rather meagrely provisioned railway food trolley waiting for the train from Inverness. The station was tiny, very pretty with flowering hanging baskets and the towering green mountains behind it.
This time we booked the car for two drivers as we'll have it until we go to Iceland on August 22 and it's hard on Max to have to drive all the time, not to mention the fact that he doesn't get such a good look at the passing parade. So I offered to drive from Craiglarich to Oban where were to get the ferry, but I was tired, and nearly drove the car off the road (I exaggerate) so Max took over again.
Oban is a pretty little town on the edge of the Sound of Mull, with the hills rising up steeply behind it. We collected our ferry tickets, left the car in the queue and had a little walk along the promenade with the million other people who appear as soon as the sun comes out, as it now had. I vividly remember a photo that Mum took when she and Dad went on their trip in 1953; it was of the sun setting low over the bay at Oban, and she told me that it was taken late at night. I remember thinking that the town and the bay looked very romantic and exotic, and I had mistakenly thought it was a long way north, almost at the top of Scotland, for the sun to be setting so late. Now, so many years later and on a sunny afternoon, it was almost just another UK seaside town, ice creams, souvenir shops, idle strollers - the lot.
The loading of the ferry was incredibly swift and efficient, and within minutes of driving on we were up on the top deck in the fabulous sunshine. It was very exciting to be sailing (well, motoring) outfox the harbour, the sea incredibly blue between the layers and layers of mountains disappearing into the distant haze of the Hebrides. There are a few ruined castles on the shore, and throughout the three-quarter-hour-trip there were constantly changing views of bright green fields running out to steep cliffs, rocks, a few ruined castles and a couple of lighthouses, and the ever-changing ranks of blue mountains. Naturally I spent my time running about the deck taking photos. I was using the telephoto lens and for some reason most of the photos are over saturated and with a blue cast. Thank goodness for Photoshop which I have now downloaded onto the computer but still have to install.
We drove off the ferry at Craignure on the Isle of Mull and it was another 40 minutes or so drive to Tobermory, the main town, where we are booked for three nights into the Western Isles Hotel. We stopped once along the way to look down into the Sound at a Tall Ship, sails furled, motoring along on the calm blue water.
When we arrived at the hotel our excitement was practically intense (to quote one of my favourite expressions from Damon Runyan). It is a very large old three storey stone house, complete with pepper-pot turret, slate roof and dormer windows. It has an over-furnished but charming sitting room, wide red-carpeted staircase and nooks and crannies everywhere, decorated with vases or other antiques. Our room is in the turret and has a large bedroom with angled ceilings, deep-silled windows, a desk and a couple of easy chairs. Plus a second room with a single bed, and a massive bathroom. And views TO DIE FOR; down the steep hill, right across the bay and the town, out through other islands and across to the hills.
By the time we had settled in and run around exclaiming like hyper-active kids, it was after six. We had booked into the restaurant which is in a glass conservatory, and then took a beer each down onto the terrace which also overlooks the bay. Beneath the hotel is a wharf and what should be berthed there but the tall ship we had seen earlier.
We had dinner at a table by the window and watched four little sailing boats pottering around, perhaps with children learning to sail because there were two rubber ducks cruising between them and eventually shepherding them back, one, my favourite yellow one with a yellow sail, onto its own mooring, and another to the ramp to be trailered out. It was idyllic.
When I came back to my emails after dinner there was one about an apartment I have booked in Inverness saying that the withdrawal of a deposit had been declined. As the same card had been declined earlier in the day when I tried to pay for petrol I had to ring Australia - the number given for the Australia Post Load and Go Travel Card - to find out what had happened. I had trouble hearing, so Max took over the conversation and found out that the transactions had been declined because my purchase at John Lewis of the computer was so much more expensive than usual, and their policy when that happens is to put a stop on the card and wait for the owner to ring up to find out what happened. This is good in a way, but I think the NAB has a better system - it sends you a text if there is an anomolous transaction and leaves it to you to get in touch if you didn't authorise it. That doesn't then leave you in the embarrassing position of handing over a card in good faith and having it declined.
Anyway, the man Max was talking to explained all this, then took the stop off the card so I can use it again.
BUT the point of this long story is that although I had rung Australia, the person we were talking to was in a call centre in Glasgow, and happened to be in John Lewis the same day I bought my computer. Small world, eh?!