Happy Birthday
“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”
Good morning and happy birthday to the best companion anyone could ever have wished for on this journey of a lifetime.
After a long but amazing Sunday, we spent the night at the Premier Inn in Oban. It’s a UK chain hotel and not as exotic as it sounds, but the hotel was very clean and comfortable.
The Oban Ferry Terminal is located directly behind the hotel, so the location was ideal. We packed up the car early and drove to the nearby Tesco Superstore so we could top off on petrol and buy a few snacks since we had no idea what would be available on the Isle of Mull.
We returned to the hotel’s parking lot and walked a short distance to Café Shore for some birthday breakfast tea and lemon drizzle cake.
The Loch Frisca was our smallest ferry so far. It’s a relatively short one-hour crossing from Oban to the Craignure Ferry Terminal on the eastern side of the Isle of Mull.
Boarding the Loch Frisca bound for Mull.
Leaving Oban harbor.
This is the bottom half of Mull. The ferry terminal at Craignure is underlined in red on the right and our destination in Finnophort is also underlined on the left.
The small island of Staffa with Fingal’s Cave is also highlighted, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
The long peninsula to reach Finnophort is called the Ross of Mull—and it’s single-track road the entire hour plus drive.
The first part of the drive is through this long mountain pass that I can only compare to how you might imagine driving through the lush rain forests in the middle of the mountains on a Hawaiian island. Single-track road aside, the scenery was unexpectedly magnificent.
Below is a map that you can zoom and pan around to see more of the region.
Looking over the Bruichladdich-blue Hebridean waters at Fionnphora and over the Sound of Iona, which is the stretch of water that separates the Ross of Mull from the smaller island of Iona in the distance on the left.
We had a tour scheduled to visit the small island of Staffa on Tuesday. However, it was forecast to rain all day, so we grabbed some clothes and snacks and walked down to the tiny harbor and waited for the Monday afternoon tour boat to arrive.
The boat’s captain informed passengers it was not choppy, but there was a long North Atlantic swell once the boat got out of the Sound of Iona, so there would be more up-and-down, and side-to-side than normal. That got a few people to back out, and we were able to join the tour! We boarded our boat Lolaire of Iona for the hour-long ride to Staffa.
Approaching Staffa (here’s the map again if you want to see where it is).
The famous hexagonal rock columns were formed millions of years ago by volcanic eruptions and a vast blanket of lava that spread into the Atlantic Ocean—the same type of lava that created the Giant’s Causeway in Country Antrim, Northern Ireland.
The formations are also nearly identical to those found about 650 miles northwest at Hálsanefshellir Cave on Iceland’s southern coast (no idea why we only shot this in black and white 🙄), as they were created by the same Paleocene lava flow and therefore share the same striking hexagonally joined basalt pillars.
Looking into Fingal’s Cave. The cave named was named after James Macpherson’s 18th Century epic poem Fingal, which was inspired by the legend of Irish chief Fionn Mac Cumhail, who is said to have built Giant’s Causeway to reach his great foe over the Irish Sea.
The pounding North Atlantic seas have slowly created this opening. Its natural acoustics amplify the sounds of the waves with its arched roof, earning the cave the Gaelic name “Uamh-Binn”—or the cave of melody. Composer Felix Mendelssohn visited the cave in 1829 while on a tour of Scotland and completed his Hebrides Overture, which is also known as Fingal’s Cave, the following year.
Staffa was hardly known until 1772, when the botanist Joseph Banks highlighted the wild, natural beauty of the island. It soon became a must-see location.
Famous visitors have included Queen Victoria, Lord Tennyson, Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, John Keats, Sir Walter Scott, and William Wordsworth.
Docking at Staffa was tricky; our captain did a great job navigating a very tight spot under less-than-ideal conditions.
Fingal’s Cave is great and all, but the real reason we went to Staffa was to see puffins.
After taking steps up to the top of the island and a 10-minute walk, you reach a grassy ledge overlooking a cove below. The captain said we might have to wait for up to 20 minutes for the puffins to show up but if we were patient, they would show up.
We sat for about 20-25 minutes, waiting. And then, as if by magic, the birds just started landing right in front of us.
It felt like an encore at a concert, where the birds were waiting for us to clap long enough and loud enough to make it worth their while to come back out on stage.
Apparently we sat long enough and were quiet enough that they decided to grace us with their presence.
👍
They are such little cartoon characters in every way. From their comical beaks, quizzical expressions, and bright colored feet, to the funny way they hop and bob their heads while they walk. They are very entertaining to watch.
Hey guys look, it’s Neil (a Jenny Colgan book reference)!
In many ways it was like they knew they had to put on a show for these stupid humans, so they eventually got on with it. They were such little show-offs.
Sadly, puffins are generally an endangered species. Apparently puffins around the coast of Maine are recovering reasonably well, but the Atlantic Puffin in the UK is still struggling.
Puffins raise just a single chick per year. Overfishing often means healthy fish stocks are not available within a close enough distance from the colony. When the puffins cannot find food nearby, they are forced to abandon their chicks in search of food. Hopefully, we’ll do right by these little guys in the long term!
You really have to see how cute and funny they look when they fly, hop, walk, and interact with each other. Check ‘em out in this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNQYMkuWu0M
Happy birthday Amanda!
The “stepping stones” where the basalt columns have fallen away.
It’s a crazy-looking landscape.
Nice to be see Amanda’s birthday displayed when we entered the Seaview B&B in Fionnphort. We’re here for two nights and this is the only B&B we stay in during our trip.
From Fionnphort, the sun sets over the Sound of Iona and Iona beyond.
A beautiful coda to a beautiful birthday celebration.
