Railroads & Riverboats

Things that make writing a dissertation better: ice cream, friends, and Crazy Rich Asians. Rhiannon and I stopped at Mary’s Milk Bar on our way to buy some suitcases on Princes Street and then afterward watched Crazy Rich Asians (my fourth time and Rhiannon’s first). I cried... a lot. Needless to say dissertation writing is going super well. 

I’ve been sticking to a pretty banal schedule of gym, library, home, so it’s not at all surprising that I have a big gap between my posts (practically a month!). However, I did take a break to get one more hill checked off of our list of seven! Hill number 6 was the Braid Hills which was lovely and different from the other hills, as it was more rolling than a peak. Then we made friends with a beautiful cat on the way home, so it was probably my favorite hill yet. Now just one to go!

The Holyrood sunsets continue! Ted and I went up the crags on Friday after a day in the library working on our dissertations. It was a nice break – we listened to Arthur Russell and drank the very strong whiskey sour I had put in my keep cup. 

My dad and I walked up to the National Gallery on Tuesday, for his last day in Edinburgh :( I had an interview there (for a job I did not get haha) and then we spent the rest of the day meandering home. We had a last supper of sorts at Mum’s comfort food for the second night in a row! It was really nice to have my dad around, especially to take my mind of off stressful dissertation and job hunting. 

We made it back to Edinburgh! After a very long and complicated drive home from Easdale (including an impromptu trip through Glen Coe), we went to Holyrood for a summer solstice celebration, complete with whiskey and sunset-watching. 

The final stop (before heading back through Mull and then back to Oban) on our 3 Isles Tour was Iona! Iona is most well-known for its Abbey, one of the oldest Christian religious centres in Western Europe. We didn’t go into the Abbey, but we did walk around the isle and see some of the beautiful beaches!

Staffa is known for two things: the puffins (as seen in the previous post) and Fingal’s Cave – a sea cave consisting of columnar basalt (just like Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland). As you may remember from two year’s ago, I was extremely excited to visit Giant’s Causeway when I visited Allison in Belfast, and it did not disappoint! Ever since, I’ve dreamed of going to Fingal’s Cave, the home of the mythical opponent to the giant described in the legend of Giant’s Causeway. Although we couldn’t go into the cave because some repairs were being done, we still got to walk around it and the island, and there was certainly no lack of columnar basalt to ogle! 

Immediately upon arrival on Staffa, my dad and I took off to the puffin colony! We managed to get really close and got to observe the puffins doing their thing – catching fish, feeding their young, and posing for the cameras! 

Our first stop off the ferry from Oban was the Isle of Mull! A bus took us from Craignure to Fionnphort, where we then caught another ferry to Staffa. Along the way, we spotted some seals and some deer, along with beautiful glens and rolling hills. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, Easadale is a great place from which to explore the Hebrides! My father and I took a 10-hour tour today: from Easdale to Seil to Oban to Mull to Staffa to Iona and back again. An amazing but exhausting day, I’ll be covering what we saw in the next few posts! Above are some views on the 45-minute ferry to and from Oban and Mull. 

As promised, a more in-depth post about Easdale! It is one of the ‘Slate Islands’, and used to be full of slate mines until the 1880s, when a storm flooded all of them. It has just about 60 residents, a pub, and a small museum dedicated to its history. It’s a beautiful little island – serene and away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life – there are no cars allowed! Overall, a wonderful place to spend the next few days and explore some of the Hebrides. 

The photo on the right is our lovely airbnb for the next few days, and on the right, you can see the view out of our front windows! Easdale Island is very very cool, I will tell you more about it in the next post, so stay tuned. 

And so we’re off to the West Coast! We left the Cairngorms in the morning and drove all day to reach our final destination of Easdale Island. Before getting to Easdale, however, we had to cross the lovely bridge on the left to get to the Isle of Seil! Island hopping, here we come. 

There’s a very cool sculpture in a quarry overlooking Tomintoul that my dad and I visited before leaving the Cairngorms, titled ‘Still’. It was designed by Angus Ritchie and Daniel Tyler, and is basically a box of mirrors. Very worth a visit. 

Our airbnb was about a 2-mile country walk to the village of Tomintoul, the highest village in the highlands! We spent a lazy day walking to the village for lunch and then wandering around before heading home via the same walking loop. It was a beautiful day for a country walk! 

The reason I wanted to have our second stop be in the Cairngorms is because of all of the opportunities for hillwalking! Today, we went on an 8-mile hike around the Glenlivet Estate, on one of the distillery’s ‘Smugglers Trails’. We encountered a lot of different farm animals and varied scenery - from roads to woods, to hills!

Upon arrival in the Cairngorms, my father and I promptly cracked open some cans of tonic and drank g&ts on the patio of our beautiful airbnb at Croughly cottage. It is so unbelievably lovely here, I could stay forever!