Just getting to the sacred isle of Iona was strewn with so many hurdles that it made going on pilgrimage seem like a piece of cake. After a few untimely mishaps in Oban, we missed the early
CalMac ferry to the Hebridean Isle of Mull. We missed it because Neil was overtired from his music gig the night before at
Markie Dan's Pub in the basement of the four-star SYHA hostel, the Victorian
Corran House.
And like a foundered horse, Neil O'Neill just couldn't get up to speed. No amount of carroty bribes or verbal threats would move him. It wasn't just the craic and the free beer or the amazing variety of scotch to choose from, or dancing with Anne, or jammin' with his old friend, Louis Barrow, that wore him out.
He was at cross-purposes with himself—being both long in tooth and long in jaw. Too much gift of the gab. And a good time was had by all. A real ceili that went on into the wee hours. Whereas I was just plain old cross as a bear. Next morning, even at top dead speed, Neil ONeill, the man so nice they named him twice, was in slo-mo. And that was that.
The tourist resort and fishing village of Oban, in Argyleshire, smack dab in the middle of the whisky trail, is also the leaping off point to the
Gateway to the Isles. With incredible sweeping views of the Inner Hebrides, the Isle of
Kerrera (where Alexander II of Scotland died), and the mountains of Mull, the Oban waterfront has it all. A picturesque horseshoe harbor, and a waterfront, with rainbow-hued houses much like the Hebridean villages of Tobermory or Bonnie Portree, but on a grander scale, Oban has its share of towers and castles too—even a Victorian folly replica of the Roman Coliseum looms on the horizon.
There is nothing more desolate than hearing the departure whistle of the ferry you're supposed to be on. No ferry tickets were left for the next sailing two hours later either. It was full up. Which meant visiting both Mull and Iona were out of the question. To have come this far and be thwarted by time and circumstance, was testing what little self-control I had left. I was feeling positively gladatorial. My Irish was up. And there's no putting it back switch. Must've been a combination of the whisky vapors and the coliseum on the hill spurring me on to a full-blown tantrum.
But we got a last minute (re-)prize, or rather (sur)prise ferry tickets from Anne, a local fairy godmother, who was good at pulling in strings and had a few local favors due. With the help of the incredible, the inimitable and stately Anne McDonald, proprietor with her daughter, of the Corran House Hostel, who was a former teacher from the Isle of Mull, and friend to actors—we managed to squeeze in a mad overnight jaunt to the holy isle of
Iona.
Anne found us sitting like stunned birds in our rental car, ensconced in the ferry wait-listed Godot lane, in utter despair. The air was thick with disappointment. We missed the boarding cutoff by three cars. I brushed aside my tears and flagellated: if only Neil had gotten it together sooner.... Not being able to board the ferry was like a body blow. Our last hopes had vanished, sunk like a stone to the bottom of the harbor of regret.
But Anne came up to the car, smartly rapped on the window, and handed us the coveted ferry tickets—which we couldn't purchase for love or money. She said we'd have to pretend we were residents—a little hard to pull off in a rental car. But everyone kindly looked the other way. Anne was truly a guardian angel. I was sad to see her go. It was like leaving family behind on a distant shore. But the ferry was boarding. They waved us on.
We were elated. The ferry ride from
Oban on the Firth of Lorn, to the Isle of
Mull, second largest of the Inner Hebridean islands, was amazing and postcard scenic. The passage takes about 45 minutes and you pass very close by
Duart Castle, the oldest inhabited castle on Mull, home of the 28th Chief of Clan MacLean. The quintessentially Scottish Duart Castle was featured in
Entrapment (1999) with Sean Connery (a Maclean on his mother's side) and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
I stood on the tallest deck of the ferry and spread my wings—a nylon windbreaker—and I was transported, or rather, momentarily airborne. I was hovering over the deck like a big black bird in the gale winds sweeping unfettered down the Lynn of Lorn,
Loch Linnhe. We passed a lighthouse on
Eilean Musdile guarding the southern tip of low-lying
Lismore island (the great garden isle), once a major center of Celtic Christianity. Oddly, where the water is still on the leeward side, the 1883 lighthouse that replaced the standing stone that once marked the winter solstice, looks like a stripped down version of the Taj Mahal.
The ferry ride was too soon over. I wanted to sail on up the passage to Skye and the Isle of Lewis. But Mull was the gateway to Iona. We landed at the wee village of
Craignure (little more than a wide spot in the road) on Mull's eastern shore, and headed south on a country road. We passed the entrance to Duart Castle. Incredible jeweled finger bays off the Firth of Lorne, sheltered coves. It was like being in Northern California and in the tropics at the same time—indescribable turquoise and cobalt waters, white sand beaches.
The isle of Mull is quite large and mountainous. As we drove down the sinuous road, through valley & glen, I kept thinking I was in Ireland. The Hebridean Isles, scrupulously scoured and carved by glaciers, are quite different than the rest of Scotland. The lowlands is a misnomer—there are long rolling ridges, but als a sameness to the topography.
We had little flex time to spare to catch the Iona ferry at
Fionnphort, so we drove like banshees down the fantastic glaciated
Ross of Mull peninsula, wildly swerving around flocks of Hebridean and merino sheep and sollitary cyclists. It takes approximately an hour to sanely drive from Craignure to Fionnaphort (pronounced
Finafor) on a 40-mile-long sinuous one-lane road. Not many tourists, but lots of sheep, so we rarely had to make use of the skinny little pullouts for oncoming traffic.
We rounded a bend and wended through the croft-village of
Bunessan with its sole hotel/pub on the shores of the seaweed garden of Loch Scridain. An oncoming lorry and no turn-outs meant we had to back our way through the village in reverse. Odd way to sightsee backwards. (Bunessan is home of the Gaelic hymn,
Child in a Manger, known to Cat Stevens fans as
Morning Has Broken). Ben More was hiding in its own weather system.
Then another wide spot in the road, the hamlet of Pennygheal, marked with strange striped barber poles designating a passing spot. Sad to see so much beauty whizzing by at 60 MPH. No time to lose. And then it was on to
Fionnphort, population 70-80, depending on who's counting,
But we missed the Iona foot ferry by minutes, and then we missed the 2nd ferry too as we had to park the car up at the St Columba Museum, because we found out too late that the road shoulders were marked No Parking. Then we had to lug our stuff down to the ferry... Luckily they came every 30 minutes, more or less, depending on the weather and the inclinations of the captain. Hard to believe that some 140,000 tourists a year are funneled through here.
The ferry disgorged its handful of foot passengers, returning tourist-pilgrims and some four-footed ones–sheep! Was I the only one enjoying the religio-pastoral joke? We lugged our gear down the ramp. The black-faced sheep suspiciously eyed Neil's guitar case and daintily stepped aside. The tourists droned on in loud superior-than-thou tourist tones. Nothing worse than a gaggle of smug returning pilgrims.
From aboard the ferry, we admired the small harbor of Fionnphort, finger slot coves, scalloped beaches, the incredible clear blue water, and on a shoal, a large rounded granite glacial erratic boulder cleaved in two by time itself. Twain worlds indeed.
