Showing posts with label Cal Mac Ferries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cal Mac Ferries. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
West Coast Birthday
We went west coast for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. There were snow flurries on the way but the sun came out and shone all weekend. Although it was chilly Scotland was looking particularly gorgeous in the sunshine. Especially with lovely blue water views, distant islands and bright yellow broom in bloom.
Here's Castle Stalker from the cafe viewpoint with views down the west coast and over to Mull:
And here are the views from near Benderloch to Mull with a tiny speck of a Cal Mac Ferry heading over from Oban (you'll have to take my word for it!):
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Inaugural Jones-Elliot Islands Tournament. Island of Gigha. Scotland. September 2010.
On a lovely, sunny day Wayno and I drove from Glasgow along Loch Lomond side and over the Rest and Be Thankful to the west coast of Scotland. And on a perfect sunny evening we took the twenty minute ferry from Tayinloan on the Kintyre Peninsula (here's the view back)...
... to the Isle of Gigha, one of the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides. Silver water, barely there waves from our wake and the Paps of Jura shadows on the horizon (here's the view forward).
From the jetty it is a minute or two drive up to the hotel, the island itself is only 6 miles long. We took the car just in case.
The island is community owned and run and we stayed at the hotel, checking in just as the sun was setting and the midges were making themselves known.
So we made a hasty retreat to the bar for smoked mackerel pate with oatcakes and halibut in a lemon butter with vegetables washed down by a nice bottle of red wine. Before moving on to 10 year old Springbank, Crabbie's Ginger Ale and Guiness (Wayne) and 10 year old Springbank (me).
And in the morning in the sunshine we played the nicest nine holes of golf I have had the pleasure of playing. Which is meant as no reflection on my actual play.
I am still waiting for the official match report (Elliot!) but the short version is that we started out with fifteen balls and returned with approximately six. I take most of the credit for that. The rough was rather rough, as evidenced by my getting a nettle sting on the nose whilst walking upright through it to find my ball. One of them.
The club house was a shed (see above), you left your ten pounds in an honesty box and signed yourself in, there were only nine holes and the match cards were finished, but the nice farmer man (who drove over to our hotel to lend us his clubs and for whom we left a fiver to replace the missing balls at the end of the round) did throw in a souvenir members tag, which Elliot now holds as the winner of the coveted Lost the Least Balls trophy.
It was my first game of golf for over a year and at the end I was pleased enough to want to play again soon. There was even a memorable hole where the ball soared over the bank of shrubs below to land near the edge of the green; such I could only dream of. The sun was shining, we had splendid views over the Kintyre Peninsula, Jura and the other small islands and wildflowers and sunflowers were growing in the field, sorry, at the edge of the course.
We had the whole place to ourselves and could hit as many balls as we wanted and take all the time in the world, which was handy when lost spectacles interrupted play.
And when we were done we had coffee at the beach in the sunshine (views above and below)...
... took the top down while we waited at the jetty, ...
... and caught the ferry back to the main land, ...
... before heading north to Oban, west to Crianlarich and south to home.
... to the Isle of Gigha, one of the southernmost of the Inner Hebrides. Silver water, barely there waves from our wake and the Paps of Jura shadows on the horizon (here's the view forward).
From the jetty it is a minute or two drive up to the hotel, the island itself is only 6 miles long. We took the car just in case.
The island is community owned and run and we stayed at the hotel, checking in just as the sun was setting and the midges were making themselves known.
So we made a hasty retreat to the bar for smoked mackerel pate with oatcakes and halibut in a lemon butter with vegetables washed down by a nice bottle of red wine. Before moving on to 10 year old Springbank, Crabbie's Ginger Ale and Guiness (Wayne) and 10 year old Springbank (me).
And in the morning in the sunshine we played the nicest nine holes of golf I have had the pleasure of playing. Which is meant as no reflection on my actual play.
I am still waiting for the official match report (Elliot!) but the short version is that we started out with fifteen balls and returned with approximately six. I take most of the credit for that. The rough was rather rough, as evidenced by my getting a nettle sting on the nose whilst walking upright through it to find my ball. One of them.
The club house was a shed (see above), you left your ten pounds in an honesty box and signed yourself in, there were only nine holes and the match cards were finished, but the nice farmer man (who drove over to our hotel to lend us his clubs and for whom we left a fiver to replace the missing balls at the end of the round) did throw in a souvenir members tag, which Elliot now holds as the winner of the coveted Lost the Least Balls trophy.
It was my first game of golf for over a year and at the end I was pleased enough to want to play again soon. There was even a memorable hole where the ball soared over the bank of shrubs below to land near the edge of the green; such I could only dream of. The sun was shining, we had splendid views over the Kintyre Peninsula, Jura and the other small islands and wildflowers and sunflowers were growing in the field, sorry, at the edge of the course.
We had the whole place to ourselves and could hit as many balls as we wanted and take all the time in the world, which was handy when lost spectacles interrupted play.
And when we were done we had coffee at the beach in the sunshine (views above and below)...
... took the top down while we waited at the jetty, ...
... and caught the ferry back to the main land, ...
... before heading north to Oban, west to Crianlarich and south to home.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
I wish I was Andrew Greig
First off he sent his poems to Norman MacCaig (wonderful Scottish poet) in his teens and was then invited to tea to discuss and thereafter he kind of had Norman MaCaig (Norman MacCaig!) for something of a mentor. And then he wrote about it all in a book Kaizer Suzy gave to me as a welcome home present. Perfect welcome home present. And now after a few day road trip with Wayno (I shall refer here to friends henceforth only by their nicknames) which included a round of golf on the nine hole course on the island of Gigha I find that the man has also written a book about playing some regular and some obscure (in terms of geography) rounds of golf. Just as I had decided that my settling back in to the UK adventures might be to take all of the scottish ferries, visit all of the islands and where possible play all of the remote golf courses along the way.
I was toying with changing the name of my blog to capture my new adventures on new - old soil, but instead I shall set off on my adventures with the inauguration of three new labels. Specifically Scottish islands, Cal Mac (Caledonian MacBrayne ferries and Golf. Consider them inaugurated.
I'll be back soon with more about the island of Gigha.
I was toying with changing the name of my blog to capture my new adventures on new - old soil, but instead I shall set off on my adventures with the inauguration of three new labels. Specifically Scottish islands, Cal Mac (Caledonian MacBrayne ferries and Golf. Consider them inaugurated.
I'll be back soon with more about the island of Gigha.
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