Iona. Wendy figured we needed to leave by 9:00; it might take as much as an hour and half to get to Fionnphort for the 11:00 boat. We missed the 11:00 boat, we missed the 12:00 boat.  There’s only one decent road on the island and it’s not always even that. It runs along the  Read the Rest…

Easter morning on Calgary Bay. In my jet-lagged stupefaction, I kept trying to say something clever about this and had to patiently remind myself over and over that it was Calvary that had Easter associations, not Calgary. Our holiday cottage was on Calgary Bay on the isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. Ours was  Read the Rest…

By the time Wendy, Sue and I arrived on Mull in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, I had spent nine hours on a plane, ten hours on trains and an hour on a boat. The three of us were still an hour by car from our holiday cottage not counting stopping for groceries in the island’s  Read the Rest…

Here I come with another U.K. travelogue. This one has two overriding features that make it different from some of my past ones. Firstly, on this trip, I left behind a sweetheart. A prevailing image that puts a lump in my throat even now when I think of this trip is that of watching Andrew’s  Read the Rest…

Castle Cary is a market town in southern Somerset but I only know it as the train stop for Butleigh where my cousins live in a stone house with five cats and a rabbit hutch used now for pegging up the washing. Sue met me at Castle Cary; David, her neighbor had driven her. I  Read the Rest…

My last night on Islay brought a doozy of a storm. I wouldn’t have minded being stranded another day but the next morning, ferries were running. However they were only running from Port Askaig, which is more sheltered than Port Ellen. We were taxied up the high road and rushed unceremoniously onto the car deck  Read the Rest…

It rained hard my third night on Islay. I looked out the window early morning and thought it was yet another reason I would miss Rachel. I had to get around on my own for the next two days. But by the time I came down to the breakfast room at The Grange, it was  Read the Rest…

My second morning on Islay Rachel drove us to the west part of the island to Kilchoman distillery. This was to be my only official distillery tour although I called in at the gift shops of nearly all of them. I’m glad Kilchoman was to be the distillery I toured because I like their Scotch  Read the Rest…

Corryvrecken is the name of a famously fierce whirlpool off the coast of Jura, the island north of Islay in the Hebrides. George Orwell and his small son were lucky to escape it drenched, but with their lives. I submit that there’s another corryvrecken on Islay and her name is Rachel.  She was my guide  Read the Rest…