Scotland 2.3: A hike across Lismore without seeing a soul

We had an appointment for a "tour" of Castle Stalker, a local castle, located on a tiny island.  In order to reach the castle, you need to go on a boat, hence needing to book the tour.  The tour began at 8:30, so we were up early again.  

After boating across, the bottom floor was decorated with Monty Python memorabilia, along with a toilet.  The fellow explained the story behind how the castle was used in the final scenes of the Holy Grail.  Apparently, Python had booked a castle that was owned by the government.  Once the government realized who the Python were, they didn't want their property being made fun of, so wouldn't allow them anymore.

The family that owned Castle Stalker, got a call, and the 22 year old son was sent from where they lived, near London, to let Python into the castle.  They gave him a small role in the castle section of the film and he told us stories about interesting things that happened on the day.  My favorite story was that the Python saw a dead sheep on the side of the road, and decided they could use it in the film.  As Graham Chapman's character approached the castle in the movie, the dead sheep was thrown onto him from atop the castle.  In reality, the dead sheep was tipped onto him from just out of camera shot.  This happened twelve times.

The castle, when bought, only had the first floor, with only the sky overhead.  The family rebuilt the floors, according to how the stones were set into the walls.  It now has the original 4 floors.  On the second floor, they recreated a dining room, along with a typical medieval kitchen.  

Miles, and one other child, were allowed to hold a broadsword and targe(shield), along with a two handed claymore sword.

The next floor had a bedroom and another fireplace room.  The fourth floor had many beds and then a walk out onto the battlements.  

I was uneasy up there, so I waited inside until they were done.  Then, we boated back to the mainland.

We had a hard time deciding what to do for the rest of the day.  There were quite a few options and we kept bouncing between them.  We opted for the less traveled destination, another small island named Lismore.  It had a "castle" that was completely in ruins and looked quite small, but beautiful, from pictures.  The information on the island was much less than the others.  I had found a route on one of the hiking websites of Scotland, but their descriptions, even with the map, seemed a bit vague.  Therefore, we decided to begin by walking along the main road.

First, we walked a little over an hour, until we reached the Lismore Heritage Museum, which also served as the island's main cafe.  The walk had nothing of interest aside from a few sheep.

As soon as we started, I began having second thoughts about our choice for the day.  There was nothing of interest to see.  However, we were here already, and ferries are an hour apart, so we continued onward.

We skipped the museum part and went straight to the cafe.  There was a 25 person elderly hiking group attending the cafe, and the first few must have showed up, because even though there was no one in line, the woman working up front kept asking for a few minutes.  Slowly, more people trickled in and their orders were taken before us.  After our orders were taken, I browsed the gift shop.  We found something of interest, a lamp shade, however there would be no way to transport it on the rest of the hike.  I had an incredible tomato and pesto panini.  

Before we left, I asked the guy running the gift shop about the alternative path back to the port, from the castle we were about to visit.  He went over the route with me and I felt more confident about giving it a try.  Surely anything must be more interesting than what we had just seen.

Fifteen minutes later and the castle was in sight.

Up close, it was even more magnificent.  

I walked around, taking other shots of the castle.  Off to my left, there was a small beach with an interesting design.

That looks like the Star Trek insignia to me...  Scotland sure does like Star Trek.

We walked towards the beach and the more open ended hiking trail that would lead us back to the ferry.  The walk shortly led to a climb up a hill, where horses were grazing.  I became enamored with a white horse.

There were other horses there too, of course.

The hike ended up being one of the most varied and beautiful hikes I've ever done.  It took near two hours.  We passed bays, small houses, up hills filled with sheep, along old stone walls, and past many gates demarcating the different owners of the island.  We had not seen a single other hiker from the cafe onward, which made it even more special.

Much of the route was boggy, however, since it had been dry for days, we had no trouble.  When researching the trail, it rated the bogginess as 3 out of 5 bogs.

After a long while, we reached a road, which led us to a small group of houses, in a part of the island named Port Ramsey.  Miles was complaining about being thirsty, and we caught someone outside, and asked if they would mind giving him water.  He drank three, albeit small, glasses.

It was no longer functional as a port though, as the water had receded.

We made it back to the port just in time for the second to last ferry off the island.  The ferry is tiny, yet there were nearly 40 people in line.  Luck shined upon us, as half of them were made up of the elderly hiking group we had run into earlier.  They did not want to split up their group among two boat trips, so we were able to pass them and board the boat.  

Tomorrow, we leave for the island of Mull, where we will be staying four nights.

Scotland 2.2: A day on the island of Kerrera and the most dramatic view of a castle yet

We woke up early and had breakfast with two women from the Netherlands, who then left for an all day hike.  We gathered our things and drove an hour south east to wait for a ferry for the island of Kerrera. 

Our hike was estimated to be three hours total, circling the bottom two thirds of the island.  We began at 11:30 am.  The weather when we had gotten out of our car was cloudy and quite breezy.  Today was scheduled to be ten degrees cooler than the previous two days, so we all had three layers of clothes on.  Once we began walking, the sun came out, and we had to each carry two of the layers with us.

We took our time, enjoying the hundreds of sheep that wandered around the island.  For Miles and I, sheep are exotic.  Stephanie pointed out that she grew up with sheep literally in her backyard, so to her, seagulls are exciting to see.

Near the beginning of the hike, Miles turned to me and asked me what I saw, as he pointed to smaller islands off the coast.  I said, the Enterprise.  He nodded yes.

Here are some of my favorite sites from the walk, including Miles befriending a dog.

At one point, Miles looked down and realized he had dropped his rain jacket.  I walked back about ten minutes on the path and was able to recover it.  Eventually, we saw Gylen Castle in the distance, the primary objective of our visit to the island.

You will have to click on the picture for it to expand.  Look closely, it is in the top left of the screen, just to the left of the group of rocks.  

Miles loves pebbled beaches, so we took a quick stop so he could enjoy himself.

We stopped at the one cafe on the island, which had shockingly good food.  I had a "spiralized" greek salad and an "apple quencher," said to have apple juice, water, mint, and a hint of lime.  It just tasted like apple juice to me.

After our break, we walked a short distance to finally arrive at the castle.  The view from the walk was breathtaking.  It was beyond a doubt the most dramatic of the castles I have seen thus far.

We climbed up a relatively steep hill and arrived at the top.  The sides of the castle went straight down, and I had a fairly strong reaction to the height, combined with how small of an area there was to walk on.  There wasn't much to actually see inside the castle, as apparently a fire had destroyed quite a bit of it.  We were only able to go up one floor, as no other floors remained.

We walked back down and I walked all around the sides, taking in the views from different angles, along with a tunnel full of sheep.

As we were leaving, we realized that more time had passed than we had thought.  It was 4:25.  The last ferry was at 6, but we remembered that there were larger gaps in ferry times around 5.  We walked at a faster pace.  This part of the hike had much less to see.  The only point of interest was a ship that had run ashore.

We arrived near the ferry about 5 minutes too late.  That ferry, at 5:00, was the last one until 5:55.  We sat down and relaxed in the shade.  Miles ended up making friends with another local dog, that apparently liked walking into the water and sitting down to cool off.

Just before our departure time, a boat passed us.  The ferry driver informed us that it was the last paddle steamer still sailing, in the world.

We drove home, picked up some food at the coop, and will relax for the rest of the night.

Scotland 2.1: A gorge from Outlander, 12 hours sleep, and a few castles on the way to Glencoe

We landed in Dublin, Ireland Airport at 5 am, after just a 6 hour flight.  A few hours later and we landed in Glasgow.  We stopped at the car rental place, Europcar, which promptly started to upsell me on a vehicle that would cost "just" 15-20 pounds more.  Her motivation for me to upgrade the car was that it had a slightly bigger trunk.  She explained that if we were to go places in between lodgings, we might get robbed.  I asked, "15 more total?"  She replied, "Per day."  I said, "No thanks."  Then, they gave me a hard time with the insurance and wanted me to pay nearly double the price for something that my credit card offers for free.  It was an irritating experience.

Our first location was only thirty minutes away, in Balloch, of Loch Lomod.  I chose this place because of its closeness to Glasgow, while still having a place of interest, a nearby gorge.  They allowed us to check in before noon, which was great.  We ate lunch on a nearby refurbished steamship that overlooked the lake.  Then, we left for the Finnich Glen.  After only a fifteen minute drive, we parked the car and walked toward the gorge.  It took us a while to find the correct entrance, so after a false start, we were on our way.  We passed other visitors, who told us about an easy way and a harder way to get down to the level of the water.

First, we took the easier way, which essentially took us to where the gorge begins.  We walked along the sides and climbed on rocks until we were no longer able to continue forward without getting wet.



We walked back up to the tops and decided to try the harder way, which led down some narrow steps.  As it had been a dry day, the steps actually weren't very hard at all.  There was a tiny section where we had to go in the dirt, because the stairs alongside it were a little wacky, but it was no big deal.  Now we were more in the center of the gorge, within sight of the main attraction, called The Devil's Pulpit.  It was a little precarious to get to, without getting wet, but we made it.  Stephanie actually found an easier way than Miles and I took, so we used her way when we left.



The whole area was absolutely beautiful, which made it super disappointing that we found litter throughout the area.  Bottles and cans were just lodged in between rocks or floating in the water.  Absolutely disgusting.  How can anyone leave things behind like that, especially in such a place?  Anyhow, we took the stairs out, it began to drizzle, and we headed home.  Stephanie reinformed me, back in the room, that Outlander filmed a scene in the gorge.



We went to sleep at 8 PM and woke up at 8:30 AM.  We ate the breakfast at the bed and breakfast.  Apparently, the areas we were going in Scotland did not have many hotels.  We packed our luggage tightly into the trunk, with only one small bag left for the floor of the back seat, covered that with some jackets, and off we went.

Our first stop was at Inveraray Castle, about an hour away.  We had first attempted to see a castle that was still lived in, about 10 minutes from Inveraray, but the front gates were closed.  We parked the car, which was in a lot with someone manning the gate, and went into the castle.

This view was opposite the castle entrance.  We would later take the path up to the tower on the mountain.

As we entered, someone welcomed us and handed Miles a quiz.  There were about 14 questions, with three possible answers each.  He had to scratch out his choice with a coin.  If he got them all right, he would get a prize at the gift shop at the end.  It was a furnished castle, on two floors, but I didn't find anything impressive.  I much prefer the outside of furnished castles to the stuffy interiors.  One thing we did learn by helping Miles with the quiz, was that five ghosts supposedly haunted the castle.  Miles picked up his prize pencil with "Inveraray Castle" on it, and left for the gardens.

The gardens were of decent size.  It was pleasant enough.



I told Miles that we would be doing a two hour walk near to the castle, and he asked for water.  We all decided to pick up water.  This turned out to be a very good idea.



I had read that it was a mild walk, so I expected it to be not very steep.  Of course, I did not see the elevation of that tower when I did my reading online.  It was also the second day in a row with sun, in the mid to high 70s.  I was in jeans as well.  Nonetheless, it was a pleasant hike.  The views from the top were very nice.



On the way down, it became cloudy, and i tied my hat, with the velcro, into one of my belt loops.  About 15 minutes later, I looked down, and my hat was nowhere to be seen.  I turned around and walked back up.  Luckily, it was only half of the distance back to the top.  As we were walking down, we heard the "baas" of nearby sheep.  It began drizzling just before we reached the castle.  We stopped in and had a very lovely lunch.

The next attraction was a 25 minute drive away, at Kinchurn Castle.  The castle was free to visit.  It was not too big, but you were free to explore, which is our preferred type of castle.  It was raining, so we had our rain jackets with us.  The castle overlooked a lake, and on the far side of the castle were a few highland cows, which are an excellent variant of cow.  They walked just near us, and eventually, a limping sheep came round as well.



Finally, we had an hour drive to our next bed and breakfast, in Ballachulish, near Glencoe.  We stopped at numerous pull over areas along the way.  This first one was a field that was filled with large rocks.  It is hard to see in the picture, but it was a very unusual sight.  This is the best I could do, with only one pull over area alongside it.



The other pull over areas showed off the mountains.



About ten minutes from our bed and breakfast was a three part waterfall.



We arrived at the bed and breakfast, brought in our stuff, and walked to a nearby coop.  We picked up food and brought it back, so we could relax for the night.  On the way to the coop we found a slug and a snail.  Here is the snail.



We are staying here for three nights and have been attempting to determine our itinerary for tomorrow.  There is a tourist center in town, that we will be going to first thing tomorrow morning, to ask them a few questions about two nearby islands.