Peelies travels

  It was no surprise but nevertheless, mid summer in these parts means very little dark. The sun set at exactly 10pm when we were at Craignure on the northeast coast. I know this as I watched it dip below the north west horizon. At Fidden you can see a jetty and just up from there, a row of cottages, each with a brightly painted door. They are a lovely sight, better for us campers than the inhabitants. They look across to a field of camper vans and motorhomes, which is a bit sad. The cottages are on Erraid, a small island cut off at high tide and only accessible on foot across the sand. There is no marked path over that sand and also, to get to the crossing point, you have to walk two miles along the road from Fidden. When I say walk, we are the only people to do that. The very few other people had clearly driven round. "Oh you've walked quickly" they said when we caught up with a couple who had presumably passed us on the road. " Yes", I said, "we walk qui...

If you read these posts in a feed from gmail, please occasionally return to the website, as I often add photos and correct entries after the initial upload. The blog is at www.peeliesgoto.blogspot.com The last sight of the sun for several days would be at Fidden which is about as far south and west as you can be on Mull without getting wet feet. It’s only just a handful of miles along the coast from the Ardlanish Weavers beach. The site is a wide, close cropped grassy area, without pitch markings. You just find a spot and spend the rest of the time looking at the sea and holding onto anything that would blow away. It is very exposed. Looking west there’s the coast of Iona close by and to the south, the bay is full of islets which are partially submerged at high tide. The campsite seemed to be full of  elderly dog walkers who didn’t seem to do any dog walking and elderly kayakers who did lots of low risk kayaking at high tide. What it doesn’t have is a mobile phone signal that EE cu...

That night the rain came but we didn’t notice. It must have been the ~12 miles we’d just walked. In the morning the ground was awash and the only suitable footwear was wellies. The tiny burn next to our camp was a torrent, fed from an almighty waterfall just above on the hillside. Yesterday this had been hardly noticeable but now it was cascading down. The lady in the café said, rather surprisingly, that she hadn’t often seen the waterfall like that. There were four other camper vans with us and they were all frequent visitors to Mull and this place. The previous night though there had been another two first-timers. One couple had taken the train from London to Glasgow where they had hired a modest van for the week, that had been nicely converted, using a distressed pallet wood theme. It looked very nice. Slowly the puddles drained and the rain stopped much sooner than expected. The plan had been to sit it out for the day but there was no need. We paid our 2 x£5 for the two night stay ...

By the time I get a mobile signal with a useful data speed, the next two or three posts will be ‘late’. There’s almost no EE signal at the south side of Mull, just very occasionally the phones spring to life and a few WhatsApps are received. A soon as they have, the ‘No service’ status returns and there can be no uploads of replies and no time to pickup the news or weather forecast. I don’t know how we managed before about 2010! In the rush to the early ferry, we’d forgotten about filling with diesel on the mainland. We turned south away from Craignuir thinking that our 1/4-1/2 full tank would be ok for this ’tiny’ island. Then Dawn had a wise moment and suggested we fill up back at Craignuir. We did and were surprised to find the island fuel at 131.9 which is a penny less than at home. The lady said it had only just gone up too. Mull is a nice place. So then we did turn south and headed for Loch Spelve. Immediately we were into a single track road with plenty of passing places. These ...

Beggars can't be choosers and so it was for us standby travellers. Whilst the weather was perfect and the views of the Firth of Lorn and Sound of Mull were no doubt stupendous, on the ferry we were stuck behind an old VeeDub Transporter and couldn't see anything. Covid rules prohibited leaving the Landy and so we pretended we were on Le Shuttle on the way to France, except we were visiting Nicola's domain and not M. Macron's. Less than an hour after leaving Oban, we pulled into the campsite next to the ferry 'terminal' at Craignure and were soon assessing the setting. There was competition for pitches as Covid restrictions have reduced the capacity here. Just what the actual restrictions are, no-one seemed to know, as spacing between pitches varied. The midges came to visit; just enough to be irritating and to add a little 'worry' about what might lie in store. A lovely motorhome pulled up in front of us and it was soon obvious that the family of four we...

The journey north was tedious with very slow traffic on the M61 and then the M6. Once we passed the exit queue to Blackpool we were 'away' and headed to Tebay services. "Why not?"  I hear you say. The plan was to head up Loch Long, past the Faslane base but this is about 30 mins longer than directly up Loch Lomond and as we were a little late we decided to take the main road to Tarbet and Arrochar. We then headed-up Rest and be Thankful. In spite of the continuous road repairs, we drove straight up without delay and then took a left at the summit and plunged down, down, all the way to Lochgoilhead. Here, after much research, we knew that there would be a welcoming pub with adjacent car park for the night. No sooner had we stopped and lifted the roof than we were greeted by people from East Kilbride who whanted to talk about the Land Rover. This was easier said than done but with a few hand gestures and mutually understood phrases, we managed to talk about not only the...

The maps (courtesy of Google) shows the position of Isle of Mull. It is directly accessible by short ferry, from Oban. We are heading there on Sunday, with an overnight at the pub at Lochgoilhead on Saturday.