Mull, Ben Nevis, and Mallaig
I'm awake early again, this time in a room overlooking Loch Linnhe, watching the sky getting lighter over the mountains on the far side. MrM is on the phone to a company that shall remain nameless, trying to get his iphone unlocked.
Breakfast yesterday was yummy: I had cream with my porridge, and stole some of MrM's haggis and black pudding. Verdict: black pudding is okay, but I prefer haggis. We had been intending to take our car over to Mull on the ferry, but I didn't book early enough to get a spot on the 9.50 and we weren't inclined to wait for the 11.55, so we scootled ourselves down to the terminal and went across as foot passengers. All the signs on the ferry were in Gaelic as well as English, as are all the roadsigns. But I haven't actually heard anyone speaking it (although admittedly I haven't exactly been going around listening in to conversations), which makes me wonder if it's more a policy choice than a bilingual population.
bar_barra, any comment?
I had been a bit worried about the weather, but the grey dawn had turned into a beautiful bright morning, although the wind was cold, and after a pleasant 45 minute crossing (most of which I spent on deck taking photos) we disembarked in Craignure. There were buses heading to Tobermore and Fionnphort, but we walked along the shore until we got to the Mull railway station. The Mull railway is about a mile long and goes from Craignure to Torosay Castle, and as you'd expect, the train is tiny - basically one person wide (or two, if they're happy to be cosy). It was a charming 20 minute ride through the forest, going past such notable locations as Skeleton Gulch, and Bob's Big Ditch, and I loved seeing all the primroses blooming beside the track.
At the other end we walked about 100m past some very contented-looking chckens and a haughty rooster to the entrance to Torosay castle, bought our ickets and went for a wander around the grounds, which are beautiful. Well-kept lawns, displays of hyacinths, jonquils and tulips in pots, a forest walk through swathes of daffodils and a long row of harvest-inspired statues. I gather there's also a Japanese garden and some HIghland cattle on the property, but we made our way over the lion lawn (past the staatues of two lions, couchant) and into the house itself. The entry was a bit alarming - about 30 sets of antlers mounted on the walls, but once we got past those the rest of the house was lovely. Portraits of family, with handwritten labels like "Olive Guthrie, my grandmother", and signs saying "please sit if you would like to" , which was a lovely contrast to the velvet ropes blocking off most historic houses. It seems to have been a busy family - there were scrapbooks detailing an Antarctic expedition in the early 20th century, and in the library above the rows of leather-bound books were a number of Australian landscapes.
Then we walked back through the gardens, caught the baby train back to Craignure and the ferry to Oban, and headed off towards Fort William. We stopped at Glencoe briefly, but there didn't seem to be much there. However, apparently there is more to it, we just seem to have missed the good bits, so we might swing back through it today. We checked into a hotel in Ballachulish, just a few miles down the road, and had a late lunch, then drove on to Fort William and Glen Nevis. Fort William itself is functional rather than particularly aesthetic, but the drive to Glen Nevis is lovely. We stopped in at the visitor centre but reading that it can snow on Beinn Neibhis any day of the year, and looking at the gear required to walk up it, reinforced our decision to admire it from afar. We were rather puzzled about how to do that though - the closest thing to the visitor centre was more of a green hill that a snow-capped peak, which didn't look like it could be the highest peak in Scotland (and indeed wasn't).
So we got back in the car and about 10 miles down the road to Mallaig realised that Beinn Neibhis was indeed a snow-capped and cloud-shrouded peak; it's not visible from Glen Nevis because the green hill hides it from that angle. So we paid our respects from the other side of the loch. The drive to Mallaig was lovely, and I took the requisite photo of the Hogwarts Express bridge (although it's too early in the year for the steam train). We stopped in Mallaig, which is a lovely fishing village and waved at Skye across the water, then drove back to Fort Wiliam, somewhat nervously due to all the signs saying watch out for deer, but no deer were sighted. Cows yes, deer no. We had dinner at the Crofter's Inn in Fort William (I don't recommend it), then drove back to Ballachulish and fell into bed.
It's light outside now, and almost time for breakfast. After breakfast we'll try to find the Glencoe museum, and then head down past Rannoch Moor to Stirling and Edinburgh.