Day 8 Helmsdale to Dervaig (on Mull)

At the Helmsdale Hostel we chatted beside a warm fire of 'The Ghan' trip, the train journey from Adelaide to Darwin, of champagne breakfasts at Uluru and of swimming in the Kakadu National Park. 

Our companions were two delightful and charming, elderly women who appeared to leave their spouses to their own devices for some weeks and set off on walking adventures together. They were about to spend 10 days on Orkney and gave us a magazine with pictures of sights we had missed on the foggy trip up the east coast of Scotland last week-end. Such a beautiful hostel, with comfy leather sofas and thick duvets. I slept better here than anywhere to date and woke to see the mountains rising directly behind us covered in flowering gorse.
Forgetting to buy for breakfast at Tesco the night before meant we were quickly on the road to Loch Ness, by-passing the tourist stops on a glen and forest route Wendy had planned. We stopped for a short while on one of its beaches and at Urquart Castle, but decided against the paying the fee to walk around the ruins. 

Breakfast was at Fort Augustus... such huge piklets!

A series of locks down the Caledonian canal into Loch Ness took Wendy away for some photography.

Snow capped Ben Nevis was extraordinarily imposing and remained in view for an hour or more as we drove toward Fort William. 

We skirted Loch Linnhe and the Glencoe area with our eye on the time to be in Oban to catch an earlier ferry than we had booked, the 4pm service to the Isle of Mull.
We made it with half an hour to spare and, while we waited, took a quick look at Oban's beautiful grey stone town scape hugging the shoreline.

The trip to Mull took us past castles on either side across the Firth of Lorn into the docks of Craignure and travelled across marsh land and up narrow mountain roads to our hostel in Dervaig. 

We are actually staying behind and in a community hall, not my best choice (it will be a 2 hour drive tomorrow back the way we came, and further, to the ferry across to Iona) but again the plus is the wonderful people you meet in hostels. We met our fellow resident late in the day. She is an art teacher who is catering in a nearby castle for a week. She had just seen Cate Winslett drive by a day or two ago in a convoy of Range Rovers. Apparently there is a film in the making near Calgary. But apart from that gossip her impressions of the island, of Iona Elena, and what she had to say about Islay Shelley, was what makes hostel stays so special. Before she left us she made us a pot of tea, none for herself, and disappeared to prepare for the next day.

We picnicked on the marsh edge as the sun set and watched a lone goose struggling to catch up with the flock before nightfall, some gulls and maybe a barn owl(?) in the distance before dusk moved us back to try Wendy's treat of the day; a taste of 17 year old Old Pulteney.

The word got round that Wendy was handing out smoked salmon!