Scotland2005: Oban -- Day 2

Well guess what -- we found semi-decent Internet access in Oban. It's at the Oban Youth Hostel and Tony and I are 1) The only ones speaking English and 2) The oldest ones here. So now we can bring you up to date on what life here in Oban is like.



Oban is a very small fishing town on the coast, and the point where the ferries to the Hebredies Islands depart. It has only a couple of streets and everything faces the waterfront. We are staying at the "Royal Hotel", but the only Royalty that would stay here are deposed ones. It's kind of shabby, but an interesting Victorian building, however the elevator is an afterthought. We have a third floor walk up, and the room is without a doubt the smallest room we've ever seen -- including Tony who has spent years in the travel industry. The double bed barely fits in the room with a small desk and TV stand. My knees hit the bathtub when sitting on the john.

In order to get ONE of the suitcases into the closet Tony had to straddle the suitcase in the "hall" between the bedroom and the bathroom, open the folding door slightly, tip the suitcase in, open the other door, slide the other side of the suitcase in, then hold both doors open to lay the suitcase down, open it up, unpack, close the doors, and then back out into the bedroom again. The other suitcase is on the side table next to the 9 INCH TV!!! On the plus side, this wee little TV in this tiny little room gets more TV channels than any of the other places we've stayed -- go figure. It must be because they roll up the sidewalks precisely at 530pm in this town. Virtually everything closes at that time except for one fish and chips stand and a movie theater -- a multiplex in fact, with TWO, count them, TWO screens!

It poured down rain all evening, and after watching a 15 year old rerun of LA Law, we walked down to a nice restaurant recommended by the front desk, where we had a surprisingly good set of steaks. Then we went to see the new Wallace and Grommit movie, and unlike Kinky Boots the other night, this is one you should save for a DVD rental. It's being hyped to the 9s here in the UK, and we had high hopes, but it wasn't that good.

We sloshed our way back to the Royal Hotel, where after getting ready for bed, we found that the mattress was fit for a princess -- a dead one. I swear it was a piece of plywood covered with a sheet. We did manage to get some sleep, and awoke at 7am for breakfast before catching the ferry to the Isle of Mull.

WE TRIED HAGGIS!!!! Shocked aren't you! They had some as part of the buffet and so we figured that this far up in the Highlands it had to be better than at a fast-food deep fried joint in Glasgow. We each put a wee tablespoon worth on our plates, spread it on some toast points, and found it surprisingly strong, but not as nasty as we might have expected. Very much like a gamey strong sausage.

The ferry to Mull is a large boat, not at all like the roll-on-roll-off Washington State Ferries. This boat was more like an ocean ship, and absolutely packed to the rafters with elderly tourists on bus tours of the Highlands.
The crossing takes about 40 minutes, and we enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate on the voyage. It was a very pretty trip, the storm had cleared, and everything was wet, but the sun was peaking out and the grass on the mountains a lovely orange brown. Approaching Mull you could see Ben Moore, the highest peak on the Island rising out of the mist, and lots of creeks and waterfalls cascading down.

We docked, and lucky for us were among the first cars off so we high-tailed it out so we could beat the Parade Of Buses on the 37 mile road to the other side of the island and the ferry to Iona.

The road was, to say the least, spectacular, and the scenery unlike anything we've ever seen. Tony said that the actual "texture" of the landscape was like nothing we have in the US. Very ancient rocks, virtually no trees, and a red-brown tinted grass that made the mountians look like they were covered in velvet.

The road was also unlike any road we've ever been on. Thirty seven miles of single track, with passing pull-outs every 100 feet or so. Thank goodness there was no on coming traffic to speak of, and we were way ahead of the busses. The experience was much like a small roller coaster with single cars -- up and down, and around and around, and WHOA!!! ANOTHER CAR!!! Pull out, pass, and then on down the road you go. Very desolate too, a few scattered farms, and some villages with three or four houses but thats it. We probably passed maybe 10 cars in 37 miles, which took us a little over an hour to cover.

The ferry to Iona leaves from a small village that is nothing more than a ticket office and a store. It's a small boat, room for a couple of cars and about 100 people. It just drops a ramp off the boat when it docks and you drive or walk up what amounts to a boat ramp. It takes 10 minutes to cross to Iona, and on that side is another village with a few houses and the remains of a Nunnery and Abbey that portions of date from St. Columba who landed from Ireland in the 560s. The previous blog post has a picture of Tony in front of a Celtic Cross that is 1300 years old.



The Abbey is still in use by a new ecumenical religious group -- or in other words a bunch of old very liberal hippies living in a commune of sorts and working for peace and justice by decrying Shell Oil, Wal-Mart, and the Bank of Scotland among other things. However, we did give them kudos for selling rainbow and AIDS ribbons in the vestibule of the church.

We ate lunch at the small Columba Hotel, which is where we also wrote the previous post, and then walked back to the ferry at about 230pm. This apparently was also the ferry that the hordes of old folks on tour busses were taking, so we bolted off the ferry when it docked and ran for the car to get ahead of the monster sized tour buses. I couldn't even contemplate driving behind those giants for 37 miles on a single track road -- all we'd see is "TOUR THE HIGHLANDS WITH US" in celtic script the whole way back.

We decided to take a side loop road too, which was way cool except that we spent a lot of time dodging sheep and cows, as this route went through a lot of pasture land. The cows are what are known as "Highland Cows", or as it's pronounced here, "Heilan Coos", and they have very long hair with bangs over their eyes and are quite cute.



Tony also got to take his turn at driving on the left side of the road for a ways, and found out it wasn't as easy as he thought and now is much less critical of my Scottish driving skills.

Tomorrow we are headed up to Ft. Williams to take the Jacobite Steam Train -- which doubles as the Harry Potter train in the movies -- the Hogwarts Express. It's about a 45 minute drive up the coast from here, and we won't get back until late so I don't know again if we'll be able to post anything, but we'll try.

We've got just under a week left here in Scotland - it's been kind of a second pilgrimage. As Chaucer said in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales:

"Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And Dalmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.
And specially from every shire's end."

Thats us in a nut shell.

From the Oban Youth Hostel, where someone is cooking curry down the hall and speaking German sitting next to us..

Gary and Tony