Scotland - Day 2

[kmusser]

The rain has stopped, at least temporarily, we have some scotch eggs for breakfast. We drive over to the Kilmartin area which is one glen to the west. This is an area of concentrated pre-historic and early medieval archeological sites – several hundred of them within a few miles of the town of Kilmartin. We stop at Temple Woods circle of standing stones on our way in and get our Pagan on, definitely felt some mystical mojo there. Continuing on in to town we stop at the Kilmartin Museum which talks about the various sites nearby (and which obviously had a Pagan design some of their exhibits). We also looked at the church next door which had a number of medieval burial stones with nice examples of celtic knotwork and also has a view of several cairns from the cemetary. We have lunch in the van again as the sky opens up and sends down buckets of rain. Fortunately it doesn’t last long. We backtrack a little bit to visit Dunadd Fort and do the short hike to the top. This was the capital of Dál Riata in the 6-9th centuries – the first Scottish kingdom in Scotland. There’s not much left but the views are stunning.

After Dunadd we are ready to move on and drive to Oban, home of zammis' favorite scotch. Yay, our first distillery! We find a parking space downtown and do a little shopping. Visit the distillery and do the tour thing including yummy taste. Buy a few bottles. Then it’s over to the ferry to the island of Mull. Find out we should’ve booked the ferry, but they put us on standby. We have some snacks and chocolate while we wait and then, Yay, they have room for us, as we become the last car to squeeze on. More beautiful views as we cross over to the island, it’s easy to see why water transport was easier than land as the islands are all craggy and you can’t really tell them apart from the mainland at a glance.

Once on Mull we have the drive across the island which we face with a little trepidation as it’s 40 miles of single track road. Proves to be no big deal though, as they seem to have passing places every 50 feet or so, and besides I think we saw more sheep on the road than other cars. The scenery on Mull is amazing, as we drive it seems like every turn offers more spectacular views than the last. At one point the sun pokes out giving everything sunbeam highlights, which prompts the look upward and comment "ok, now you’re just showing off." Our campsite for the night is on a sheep farm on the western tip of the island with a view of Iona island and the Atlantic. If a campsite exists with a better view I don’t want to know about it.



In retrospect this was probably my favorite day of the trip.