West Coast Walks - day four and return

The choppy weather had forced all the boat operators to cancel the trips out to Staffa, which had been our original plan for the day, so Ken came up with Plan B again, which was a couple of beach walks with a break for lunch at the local pub/restaurant. Before that, however, a few of us were up early enough to take a look inside the Abbey before it officially opened for business. They were ready for Sunday service:

Setting off towards the north of the island, the first task was to climb the only significant hill on Iona - all 300 feet or so of it. A bit like going up Mount St. - only greener:

From there it was down to the beach:

We could spy Staffa and Fingal's Cave in the distance, almost taunting us:

After our walk round the coast, we headed across fields towards a sign which indicated the direction back to the main road and another one towards the hostel. We took the latter, slightly shorter route and came across our first grumpy islander, apparently resident or owner of the hostel, who enquired as to whether we could read or not?

There was a civilian walking beside us and I asked him whether we had come the wrong way or not and he replied "you have, but I haven't", which meant in his eyes that he was entitled to take this short cut because he was a local, but we weren't.

A little further on, at noon, we stopped for our traditional drams. We didn't offer one to the civilian who had been walking beside us:

The skies were clearing and it gave us the opportunity to sit outside the pub for our lunch. Dave, Ken and I had mussels in a white wine and garlic sauce but Andy opted for more conventional carbohydrates:

The afternoon walk took us to the east of the island, eventually crossing the golf course - which didn't appear to have any pins - nor greens that we could see - to the western beaches and back. It was on our return journey that we came across grumpy local number two. The road we were walking on was fairly narrow, and this particular individual was driving a van (the locals have cars, but not the tourists). Most of our group moved to the left to let him pass, but Dave went right, which incurred the wrath of the driver, who stopped, wound down his window and gave Dave a mouthful for making the road too narrow for him to pass safely - he thought his wing mirrors might clip him.

The combined morning and afternoon walks totalled over 17 kms - the longest of the weekend - http://www.mapmywalk.com/routes/view/714490037

Dinner in the evening was in our hotel again - not quite up to the standard of the previous night, but still very acceptable. In the morning, we packed our bags and headed off after breakfast down to catch the 8:50 am ferry. The hotel owners kindly took our bags down in their van. Here's the hotel from the ferry:

We drove back across Mull to Craignure to catch the big ferry to Oban, passing through Glen More again:

This photo of Ken on board the Oban ferry is indicative of the changeable weather we experienced over the weekend:

Once we landed at Oban, Dave shot off - he had a plane to catch. I guess he and Ken must have been home mid-afternoon, but the rest of us stopped for a bite of lunch at the Green Welly Stop, Tyndrum. We were still safely home before 5 pm.

Great weekend. Good fun, good company - and well done again Ken.