If you look at the map…we’ve covered only the tiniest little section of Scotland. Just on a month exploring the west coast and islands, and how spectacular it was indeed.
June 28-29, 45km back to Ardfern from Oban.
A determined ride to make it to the Folks at Ardfern in time for lunch!
Then another lovely couple of days spent chatting, walking and fixing a few things….
Dinner out at the local pub…and another chance to rate the legendary Cullen Skink. No.2 so far on Neil’s ranking list 😁
It may be a little while before we see these guys again, but so very good to be able to spend some time in their neck of the woods for a while.
June 30, 56km and a soggy wet ride to Tarbet.
Pulled into Lochgilphead at around the half way mark to find a spot of lunch, thinking that a nice warm Cafe would thaw us out. Found one that looked perfect and parked our bikes, ready to de-layer the waterproofs, but at very kindly crew member saw us and stopped us from getting too comfy- no spots available sorry.
Ah well. A bacon roll from the nearby takeaway on a damp bench by the “almost” seaside did the trick to see us through for the next stint.
A Pod for the night near Tarbet- thankfully! It really just didn’t want to stop raining, so was good to have a little bit of space out of the weather.
An early start planned for the morning as we were notified that our 10am ferry today Islay “may be disrupted”. Best to try for the 7am one instead…which means 6am on the road. Yuk…
1st July A couple of Ferries and goodbye to Scotland!!
An early start, a beautiful day and one last Scottish fry-up from the ferry cafeteria, and we’re on our way to Islay. Which is actually pronounced EyeLa…who knew… (probably everyone except me 🙃)
We were on the island before 10am, so had plenty of time to explore the beautiful coastal bits near Port Ellen…
And of course we couldn’t not pop into a couple of the famous Islay distilleries and try a wee dram. We were really impressed with Laphroaig, no hard sell, lots of fascinating history and perhaps a little too generous on the complimentary tasting…but they made a sale out of it so win win I guess!
In case you’re wondering, we didn’t buy this one…
Scotland has been amazing. A bit of everything that the weather Gods could throw at us. Beautiful scenery, a few too many hills 🤣, good food, bad food and too much food! And of course, family 🥰.
So we’ll be back to explore more later.
A short and fast ferry ride later, in a boat no bigger than 12metres, we’ve crossed the sea to Northern Ireland for the next leg of “whatever comes next”. But that’s for another day…
Let’s go cycling 
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