To Islay

The midges were atrocious last night, it was a cold night and the midges were bad again this morning so it didn't make a happy ending to our second night. A shame as basically it was a nice site.

Today we did pretty much as planned: caught the ferry over to Kintyre, had a cup of tea and a cake in the pretty little port of Tarbert and then drove across to Kennacraig to pick up the ferry to Islay. We were very early - the second car to arrive - but it was a lovely day and we had a long chat with the other driver¹.

The crossing was pretty uneventful. A long sail down the loch and then nice views of Jura as we headed for Port Askaig. On Islay it was a very easy run to the camp site which seems to be completely marvellous: hot showers, washing up facility, laundry facility, cafe, free wireless broadband, accessible even from outside the building, and our pitch (with power hookup) overlooks the sea. It was a bit pricy at £19 a night and they don't take plastic so that cleaned me out, but seemed like good value to me.

The down side came later. The hook ups are next to the football pitch ... good plan huh? During the match several caravans and motorhomes were hit and the owners weren't impressed.

Oh well. I still think it's an impressive site. We're here now for four days so tomorrow I think we'll be airbed shopping (although I'm not that optimistic) and we might fit in a distillery tour as Beth wants some whisky. Islay has seven distilleries and there's another on Jura so we're not short of choices here. Bowmore is the most likely as Beth's not tried their malt yet and there's allegedly a shop opposite that may, just may, sell airbeds.

1. Who lives on Jura and was heading for home. He told us tales of the time they got all the way to Islay on a rough crossing only to be told it was too rough to moor and they turned around and came back. Another time going the other way they got to the mainland but then got stranded at the ferry terminal as the causeway to the mainland proper was flooding by a freak high tide.