Scotland #7: Isle of Mull
Next stop Isle of Mull! This time for real!
It took us two ferries to get onto the isle: the first one was quite small and we got a front-row spot. The second one was a bit larger and it had its ramp bent over us.
Apart from the one main road on the isle every other road was single lane only which means that there are an incredible amount of passing points. These are used so you can be a nice person and let someone else overtake in case that they are faster (which feels impossible and dangerous but hey). Alternatively you can be also a nice person by letting the traffic in the other direction pass.\ But the perfect moment always was when everyone adjusted their speed to arrive at the passing spot at the same time and could continue without having to come to a complete stop.
When we arrived at the campsite there were already a few people and a couple there told us that they just saw two young white tailed eagles. A few minutes later when we set-up our tent, the eagles came back and showed their faces to us as well.\ Mull seems to be in general a really good place to channel your inner ornithologist.
It was already a bit late but we still had time for a short walk along the shoreline.
At the end of a beach close by was Moy Castle. A castle that felt more like a very large tower than a castle but still looked very impressive.
The next day we started with a short walk to a stone circle located nearby. The funny thing was that there is a Wikipedia article on it in German but not in English. It doesn’t contain a lot of information other than that it exists and there are several other standing stones nearby. For us it was interesting to see that some German decided to write one whereas the English speaking world didn’t.
Next stop a few kilometers away was the mausoleum of the Clan Maclaine of Lochbuie. We primarily went there to see highland cows and were also not disappointed by the neat mausoleum that they built back in the day.
As a last stop for the day we went to Carsaig to hike to the Carsaig Arches. On the way there was a red telephone box that was featured in the movie ”I know where I’m going” from 1945. It’s pretty cool because some of the places in the movie are also featured here now. So maybe we’ll watch it and see if we recognize something.
Initially the hike was planned to be a little more than three hours. Maybe we were a bit too naive to believe in the automatic time estimate of our hiking app but in the end it took us over 5 hours.\ This was due to the fact that sometimes the path was barely visible and you had to cross rock slides where no path was visible at all.\ During the hike we didn’t see anything else but goats, so we assume that the path is maintained by the goat flocks that we saw.
But the long hike was worth it in the end and a nice grand finale for the Isle of Mull.
One more thing: if you ever decide to open up a campsite in a location were it rains a lot, you get bonus points from us if you have a community area. This way you can still cook and don’t have to wait for the rain to pass.