Holiday Haul - West Coast of Scotland

I thought I would round off my blogs about travelling on the west coast of Scotland with a little haul.  I try not to buy too much stuff these days when I travel anywhere, especially those little trinkets that are supposed to 'remind' you of your travels, but I do like to look for local products that I can actually use.

So, let's start with the whiskey.  After all, you can't travel to Islay and Jura and not get some whiskey - that would just be sacrilegious.  We had decided not to have a tour of the Jura distillery as we only had one day there, but we did visit the shop.  I couldn't decide which whiskey to get so I plumbed for getting 'The Collection' which would allow me to try all three.  

And, after our tour of the Caol Ila distillery where Dad and me made ourselves feel ill by testing whiskey at 10.30 in the morning, I decided to get their most popular 12 year old single malt.  Caol Ila usually make whiskey to mix, so it's unusual to find their single malts.  We also got a free glass after the tour, which is always nice.

I had been seeing these island specific toiletries all over the place and was interested in buying but hadn't been able to find anywhere that actually sold them.  They are made from very simple, natural ingredients, and each has a unique scent connected to the local area.  While in the whiskey shop on Jura I noticed that they were selling the Jura version and so I brought the hand cream.  It's been very effective on my dry hands and smells great (Jura whiskey 😉) and is in a glass bottle, but it's not a vegan product if that is what you're looking for.

While on Jura we also visited the Crackaig Textile Studio (run by Fiona McDonald) which had a range of products in the Isle of Jura tartan.  I really liked the colour mix, which are meant to have been inspired by the island's winter colours with the brown colour coming from natural plant dyes.  My parents brought me a scarf in the tartan for my birthday, but if you're hoping to get something of the same it's only sold on the island and you can't get it anywhere else.

I couldn't find anything in the craft shop on Islay I really wanted to get, but did buy a crafted wooden spoon made of ash which I assume I can use to eat with (please let me know if I can't) and some left over deer horns from when they make the buttons for the dog back home to chew on.  Loki loves this and it keeps him busy for hours.

I only brought a few more things when we were back on the mainland.  The first was a mug from the Sarah Berry Studio at Tayvallich.  I was thinking about getting one of the prints that she has, but I already have a number of pictures I still need to find a home for and decided to go for a mug that I can use daily instead.  I love the depiction of the otter in water and the money goes towards the Tayvallich school.

I was still looking to see if I could find anymore of those local toiletries, but there didn't seem to be any other stores that stocked them.  However, I did find some products from the Highland Soap Company, which I have been wanting to try for a while.  I didn't really feel that I need any shower wash or moisturiser but, as my partner prefers washing his hands with liquid soap instead of bar soap, I thought I would get the Aloe Vera Hand Wash in Hebridean Seaweed.  It smells really nice and hasn't had any drying effect on my hands at all, but it would be better if it was in a glass bottle rather than plastic.

The one thing that I had been looking for throughout my trip was either a flat or foxhound cap.  The plan is to use the cap to put all my hair into when I'm doing my traineeship.  I had been looking on Islay for the cap as it is famous for Islay wool, but I couldn't find anything.  However, while we were heading back down to Glasgow to stopped off The Village Rest at Luss on Loch Lomond so get a warm drink as the weather had turned pretty cold.  There was a little shop there all Scotland themed, as you would expect at Loch Lomond, and I found this hat for about £12.  It's not pure wool, but a wool / polyester mix, but I like the colour, the shape, and my hair fits in there fine.  It was also a good price to test to see if this will actually work for me.  If it does, I can always spend a little bit more later on.

I also got a comb for my partner (whose comb mad) from that shop with a fancy little cover.

And that's everything I got while away.  Had I been sensible I would have remembered to keep the prices so that I could have put those in, but I didn't think that I would be putting these in a blog at the time.

Travelling March - part 1: Islay and Jura

At the end of last month my parents came up for a week and we travelled to the west coast of Scotland to spend some time on the Isle of Islay, the Isle of Jura and around Kilmartin Glen.  If I wrote about it in full detail then this would be a very long blog, and I'm not wanting to do that, but I thought it would be nice to remind myself of the trip as the weather was so beautiful.  I'm going to leave out the places we stayed at as neither were particularly great and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone.  As a further note, I was meant to write and publish this last week, but I have had some good news about work that meant I had to try and organise a number of things.

We took the ferry from Kennacraig to Port Askaig on Isle of Islay.  Despite the cold wind the weather made the view of Jura and Islay was absolutely stunning.  So blue.  There was also a good view of wildlife as well, mainly Great Northern Divers.  Port Askaig isn't the main port (that would be Port Ellen), but it is a pretty little port with only a hotel / pub, shop / post office, ferry terminal, and a lifeboat station. 

Once we had arrived at Port Askaig there wasn't a large amount of the day left to us, so we decided to have a little drive around the north east of the island and to go to Loch Finlaggan.  Loch Finlaggan used to be the home of the Lords of the Isles (later to become the Clan Donald) who 'freed' the Isles from the Vikings.  There are three islands, two of which contain the remains of the buildings used by the Lords, with Eilean na Comhairle containing the Council of the Isles and Eilean Mor containing the great hall, living quarters, a chapel and paved roads.  

There were also some amazing tombstones on the island aswell, traditionally those of the wives and children of the Lords of the Isles.  This was a very beautiful site.  And that was it for the day and we went back to the hotel to get ready for the next.

Day 2 of the holiday was mainly a wildlife day and we first travelled to the RSPB Reserve at Loch Gruinart.  While we did walk through the woodland walk we mainly spent our time in the hides in front of the marsh area.  

There was a good selection of birds for this time of year (obviously not too many waders), predominantly of wild fowl variety.  I got to watch some of my favourite birds, which are the Teals and the Pintails, and there was just a nice calm feeling.  I can image later on in the year the hides are pretty busy, but at this time of year it was just us.  I also learnt that not everyone can smell the coconut scent coming the Gorse flowers, something I wasn't aware of before.

We wanted to find some craft work on Islay, as theoretically the island is famous of Islay wool, but only really found one place called Tormisdale Croft Crafts.  So, after lunch at Port Charlotte, we headed there.  The owner spins her own wool from the Alpacas that are on the island and makes items using wool and recycled products.  While the shop was of interest, I didn't find any products that I really liked and ended up buying a wooden spoon, made of Ash, and some waste deer horns for Loki to chew on.  We did also drive past the Islay Celtic Craft shop, but the owner wasn't in.

As it was such a beautiful day and the views of the coast were so beautiful we decided to carry on driving south until we reached Portnahaven before driving back up to Port Charlotte.  We then carried on north, back past Loch Gruinart and up to Ardnave Point.  We had decided to go there as my father had read that there was a recommended walk that would take you to the coast.  This could, theoretically, be a beautiful walk, but you are mainly walking through fields of cattle.  However, there is a view point actually at Ardnave Point (which I believe looks at Nave Island) which is beautiful and theoretically should give you a view of many species.  We only got seals on this occasion, but I do still enjoy watching them regardless of how often I see them.  Then we headed back to the hotel.

Day 3 was probably my favourite day of the holiday and it was spent on Jura.  The weather that day was amazing with beautiful clear blue skies.  There was still a slight chill in the wind, but that was to be expected for this time of year and, as we were walking, was actually welcome.  We took the ferry from Port Askaig and drove straight to the main town of Craighouse.  As we were visiting off season not everything was open, but we were able to go to the local shop and then have some tea at the hotel.  

We wanted to do some more walking and first did the Corran sand and river circuit walk (just north of Craighouse).  This walk gave great views of the coast and also the Paps of Jura and, while a little wet underfoot, was lovely in the weather.  

Then after lunch, also at the hotel (which was some of the best vegetarian food I'd had so far), we then did the Craighouse view walk, which was a little steep but gave a great view of the west end of the island.  We were really hoping to see some eagles and Jura is meant to be quite a good place to see them.  The west side of the island seemed a more likely choice due to the terrain, but at this point they were a no show.

We had decided not to go to the distillery on Jura but did want to see what crafts were available.  We went to the Crackaig Textile Studio on the off-chance it was open and the owner kindly opened it for us.  I much prefered the quality and style of the crafts here to Tormisdale Croft Crafts and got a scarf in The Isle of Jura tartan.  Apparently she didn't have all her products out at the moment, but there were still a good selection of items.

Lastly we drove up north to Tarbert to get a better view of the island and to see the point where the isle is at it's thinnest.  We kept an eye at the skies in the hope of seeing eagles and, while the Sea eagles were a no show, we did get get a good view of two Golden eagles.  Definitely the icing on the cake.  

We had decided to visit Bowmore to eat, but were a little disappointed by this capital city.  Instead we ended up eating at the Bridgend Hotel.  The food was lovely, if not a little pricey, they had local beers (which I had wanted to try), and the owner was friendly, though obviously trying to get us to stay with them next time.

Day 4 was the last day of our holiday on the Isles.  As we were getting the ferry in the afternoon we didn't have a lot of time to do much more sightseeing.  My Dad had booked us into a tour of the Coal Ila that morning and we also got to do some whiskey tasting (which turned out to not be a great idea - drinking at 10.30 am is definitely not something my body thinks it acceptable).  There was still some time before the ferry so we decided to look at the south of Islay as we hadn't visited this part yet.  We had coffee at Port Ellen (not quite as bustling as we were expecting) and then headed to the other RSPB reserve of The Oa.

Unfortunately the weather had begun to turn at this point and it was very cloudy and windy.  Due to that the wildlife was in short supply (no Golden eagles this time) as they had sensibly got out of the weather.  However, the view over the water with the dark weather was still beautiful and the American Monument was both striking and sad on the edge of the cliff.  We did get to see some native cattle though, that looked distinctly unfazed by the weather.  

The only downside to reserve was the path we took back from the monument to the car park.  I guess this has been built to both make it easier for people to get to the monument and to protect the moorland, but it looked so distinctly out of place.

We then headed back to Port Askaig and the mainland to then spend the rest of our holiday.