Eye-la/Islay

My summer holidays rapidly slipping from my grasp I made a last ditch attempt to 'do stuff'. Thus I am furnished with exciting things to plug awkward conversations with in the coming freshers week, plus also I got to have a really good time in some cool places. Everyone's a winner!

First up is the scottish island of Islay, (that's Eye-la for you pronounciation fans!). I was graciously invited to stay in her family's amazing house by my friend Claire, who I have known for two years but have only actually interacted with for something like two weeks in all that time... Also along for the ride were a large number of other people, some more scottish than others, all gathered together by their mutual desire to celebrate Claire's birthday and drink alcohol on a picturesque island.

Islay doesn't look all that far in remote scottish terms, it is as the crow flies pretty close to Glasgow. Don't let that fool you, you have to take a three and a half hour bus journey up and down a peninsula, then a two and a half hour ferry journey. If you're unlucky like I was, there may even be a squall which prevents you from docking at your first choice of port and adds an extra hour and a half to your ferry journey... Normally I am very zen about this aspect of travelling, content to enjoy the feeling of doing nothing while being whisked to my destination. However, I foolishly chose to leave london on the 5.39am train, and it took me around 15 hours all told (including waiting at changeovers) to make the trip, so I wasn't exactly sprightly on my arrival.

Over the next few days I was shown the island. The beaches are stunning, wide with bright white coral sand and turquoise-blue water in the sunlight. They may be a little more blustery than your average caribbean island, but then again on what carribbean island would you be able to have the beach pretty much to yourself? The scenery of the islands is clearly very influenced by the thick pile of ice that 'recently' retreated from it, hummocky and rounded with few big hills meaning the highest peaks visible a lot of the time are the 'paps' of the next island over, Jura, or just the anvil shapes of thunderclouds out in the atlantic. I spent a lot of time over-exuberantly pointing out various geological quirks that were to be seen in abundance (raised beaches, dikes, the second oldest rocks in the British Isles) and I hope my blind enthusiasm was enough to prevent at least total disinterest from the people around me.

The scenery and atmosphere of the island, bathed as it was in late summer sunlight, was utterly relaxing. Sitting on the end of the pier in the tiny harbour/beach ten seconds from our door, gazing out at the blinding white of the lighthouse against the purplish green grey of the hills on the opposite shore of the inlet, surrounded by gently lapping clear bue water and free at last from the bastard midges that plagued anywhere more inland, I thought to myself that there might be nowhere better to sit with a book for a hundred miles.

The thing to do when the sun isn't cooperating with idyllic dreams of perfect beaches is to go to the distillery. Unfortunately I am physically/psychologically unable, at this point in time, to drink whisky. I am all in favour of anything with as much subtle taste, variety, and reliance on locality as whisky undoubtedly possesses, I just can't drink the stuff. Luckily I appear to be able to eat it, as the haggis with neaps, tatties and a honey cream and whisky sauce I had at Ardbeg distillery was fantastically delicious. Although I only had 3 full days to enjoy the scenery, atmosphere and cuisine of the island, and the entertaining company of my hosts (most of whom were totally unknown to me before I made the trip) I would rate this mini holiday as HIGHLY EXCELLENT. I would go again, and probably will when I want to go somewhere to do nothing in gorgeous surroundings, Costa del Sol be damned!

As always, some approximation of the landscape can be found here.

Der Tomcdh (Approximate Scottish language spelling of my name, probably)