IONA AND THE MUSICAL CAVE

As difficult as it was to leave the castle we took advantage of a break in the rainy weather and headed to the Isle of Iona. We took the scenic route.  Just love these roads here in Scotland- room for one car with turnouts to let the other vehicle by.  You just pray there's a turnout when you see a vehicle approaching.

This is when you're glad you wore panty liners.  (OOPS too much info).

One of our favoriite sites on our car excursions on these exciting roads is this:  toilets (we could care less about the poice station).  I'm sure this is where the saying "too few and far between" came from!

We finally made it to the ferry and landed on the Isle of Iona.  This is where St. Columba landed in 563 AD and brought Christianity to Scotland.  No cars are allowed on the island and many people come here for religious retreats.  

We first visited the ruins of the Nunnery, a Benedictine convent, which was established in 1203.

The pink granite walls that remain are amongst the best examples of a medieval nunnery left in Britain.

This convent flouished for more than 350 years.

The Abby which was built on the site of St. Columba's monastery dates back to 1220AD.  The restoration was completed in 1965,from which the Iona Community have run it as a residential centre and continued daily worship in the Abbey.

Sharon and I left Ginger and JoAnne to ferry over to the Isle of Staffa and visit Fingal's Cave, which inspired Mendelssohn to write The Hebrides Overture.  (On the score he labelled the music Fingal's Cave).  We hopped on the 1:45 Ferry thinking it was an hour trip.  Well.......it wasn't exactly an hour trip.  It was an hour to the island, an hour on the island, and an hour back.  Oh dear!  JoAnne and Ginger should have come with us and then we wouldn't have been in trouble.  All their fault if we kept them waiting - right ?

This is Sharon learning that the trip is three hours.

Here we are approaching the isle of Staffa, truly interesting.

This is the face of Staffa.

It was worth the three hour trip and the possible wrath of good friends.

So interesting!

It was a little treacherous getting to the cave but after being on the roads here, a nothing.  Everything is relative.

This is nature's work - not man made.  Turly awsome.

Now we had to deal with questions like -- where would JoAnne and Ginger be?  We had gotten information that the boat which had taken us to Staffa from Iona and made a stop in Fionnphort to pick up more people would be stopping in Fionnphort once again to drop people off before returning to Iona.  Now our car was parked in Fionnphort so should we get off there or go back to Iona? We both decided that Sharon and JoAnne being extremely smart would find out all the info on our adventure and return to Fionnphort and wait for us.  When we docked I stood on the bench and saw JoAnne's white hair.  What a vision!  We were so happy!  They had enjoyed their day on the island and we enjoyed our adventure.  All is well that ends well!

Now we had a long drive back to our castle.  We did take a less scenic route but still not an easy drive.  We decided to drive all the way to Tobermory, the town closest to the castle, before stopping for dinner.  

 Tobermory is a fishing port built in the late 18th century and is the main town on the Isle of Mull as well as the capital.  It's current population is 700.  Loved the colorful downtown buildings.

We found a little Restaurant called The Galleon Grilll and Sharon and I tried one of their local dishes of Langoustines.  I don't think we'll have it again:-)! We were still hungry when we finished so we had to order dessert.

We were looking forward to getting back to our home - only a 25 minute drive away!

I thought you should  know that Iona was known as the Isle of beautiful women.  I'm not sure if that was written before or after our visit.