ISLE OF MULL
June 11-16, Monday through Saturday
We had no idea where-or what-- Arle Lodge was. Val hadn't given us many details. The bus driver sold us our ticket and said he'd let us off at Arle Lodge. OK.
We rode north this time, on the road to Tobermory. In about twenty minutes the bus stopped and shot us off onto the roadside. We collected our suitcase, and there we were! Three whitewashed buildings fronted by grazing sheep stood between us and the sea. It was a picture postcard, my Arcadian dreams come true.
A cow crossing blocked the lane to the cots. A cow crossing is iron grates laid into the road. They use them a lot in the American West. Cows and sheep can't figure out any way to walk on the narrow irons of the grates, so they don't. Humans can figure it out, but don't want to. We went through an iron gate beside the cow crossing and closed it carefully so the local livestock would stay home.
Arle Lodge is an unusual establishment. It was originally a hostel with dorm-like bunk beds in sleeping rooms and a large kitchen/great room for guests to make their meals, watch TV, play games, or read and chat. The present owners, the Morrises, escaped from London and bought it five years ago. They made it into a modified B&B. The bunk beds went out and the seven rooms became individual bedrooms. Four of them are ensuite, (have a private bath), and three are just bedrooms with separate shared toilet rooms and showers. We had an en suite room.
The large gathering room/kitchen remains the same as its hostel days, and is open twenty-four hours a day. Because Arle Lodge is still classified as a hostel, the owners cannot cook you a breakfast as a normal B&B would. Instead, there is orange juice, cereals, bread, teas, fruit, and milk set out and you make your own breakfast. The kitchen is free to use for cooking any other meals or snacks you want. How great was that? Well, I'll tell you; setting out a supper on a table before a huge window framing sheep and sea surely beats setting out supper on a bed and balancing cheese and crackers on your knee while you sip your powdered soup made in a tea cup. Eating breakfast with the same view of sheep, The Sound of Mull, and the mountains across the sound was real special!
When Pat Morris showed us the room, he asked rather anxiously if we had brought food with us. Arle Lodge is in the countryside a distance from any settlement. We never travel anywhere without food. We had not only cheese, crackers, and fruit with us, we had wine. Life at Arle Lodge was going to be comfortable!
The Morrises live in another of the three white houses next to the hostel building. (The third building belongs to a neighbor.) Their yard is fenced and gated because Hamish the sheep lives there. Hamish is a huge ball of white wool. One of the other tourists remarked at breakfast, as we all studied Hamish through the window, that you could probably saddle him. I got to feed Hamish one day. Pat gave me some alfalfa pellets. I held them out in my hand. Hamish couldn't get across the yard fast enough. He daintily picked the pellets from my palm with his lips. Then he hung around hoping for more, and let me pet him. I petted his nose, patted his back, and we both enjoyed ourselves.
Hamish won't get sheared until July because of the chance of cold weather before then. Some of the sheep in the front meadow were already sheared, fear of cold or not. They were on their own. But Hamish leads a pampered life, poor dear.
At 9:20 a.m. the next morning we were at the end of the driveway to catch the bus back to Craignure for a day's outing. At Craignure we walked a few blocks to a railway station and climbed into a tiny open car on the narrow gauge Mull-Craignure Railway. A shiny green little coal-burning engine pulls the cars three miles through woods along the shore to Castle Torosay. I got photos of yellow-flowering gorse, wild foxglove, and Scotch thistle along the way.
A path led from the shelter building at the end of the train tracks up a hill to Torosay. When the woods gave way to meadow, I could see Castle Duart at the tip of its far point of land. So could others. A fellow and I boldly opened the gate and went into the meadow to get a better shot of it. He talked about the lighting not being good at that time and coming back later for a better shot. I heartily agreed with him. He was, however, taking pictures anyway. So did I. I changed the focus and sighted this way and that like he did. Not that it mattered. My little 2 megapixel point and shoot camera could hardly find Duart in the vewfinder, it was so far away. We left the meadow, he and I, locked the gate, and rejoined our group. I heard him telling his wife about the lighting as we moved on up the path.
Torosay is spectacular. It really does look like a castle, but it's a manor house built in what is called “Scottish Baronial” style. The first floor is open for tourists. The present owner, Chris Guthrie-James, wrote the text on the little cards explaining family furniture and photos. It is clever and interesting reading, a contrast to the usual dry interpretive cards. The second and third floors are where Chris and his wife live. You can climb the stairs to see the family portraits, but you can't go in.
There's a tearoom at the end of the first floor rooms of the manor, a pretty place with flowered tablecloths lit by sunshine through mullioned windows. We settled in for a tea and some lentil soup before tackling the outside of the manor. There were picnic tables on the terrace outside, but Mull, like other islands, is cooler than the mainland despite the sunshine. The natives ate out there. Bob and I had the inside room all to ourselves.
The big draw at Torosay is the gardens, all twelve and a half acres of them. Some are terraced formal gardens; some are woods with winding paths and little surprise ponds and streams. Colorful flowers have been planted as understory in the woods. Not only that, but visitors are invited to tour the greenhouses and plant nurseries that feed the showy lawns and beds. I was right there to check them out. I was everywhere, sometimes twice. After viewing the formal gardens, Bob chose a bench in the sun and had himself a nap. He's in the throes of one of those “airplane” colds, and doesn't feel wonderful.
We caught the last train back to Craignure. It was sunny when we left Torosay, but dark and overcast in Craignure, just three miles away. Light sprinkles dappled our jackets while we walked down to the bus stands. We had an hour before the Tobermory bus would head back north to Arle. There are a half-dozen houses in Craignure, a small grocery store, a post office/souvenir shop, and a charity shop named Island Castaways-plus the bus stands, ferry dock, and TIC. We picked up wine and cheese in the grocery store, then went our separate ways. I started at the post office to buy stamps. While I was in there, the heavens opened. I shot up my black umbrella, and waded over to the charity shop. They had books, but I didn't find one to buy. I did buy a belt. I waded back to the TIC and met Bob.
By the time the Tobermory bus got in, the rain had let up. We climbed on for the ride to Arle Lodge. The driver, oblivious, shot right by our driveway. I yelled “Arle, Arle!” He hit the brakes. When we got out, a red-haired woman with a large daypack also got off. We all walked back along the lane to the Lodge. When I say “lane,” I mean lane. The road is just one lane wide. When cars, or car and bus meet, one pulls over into the grass and stops to allow the other vehicle past. There are also little gravel pull-offs for passing, but not always where they're needed.
We met the red-haired gal again at supper. She had brought no food with her. Pat's wife, Hazel, gave the woman a potato, a can of mushy peas, and a can of sardines. The gal was having a struggle in the kitchen. She was from Holland and her English was not that good. She didn't know what the labels on the cupboards said, so we helped her find a pan, bowl, and mug. Pat came by and showed her how to light the gas stove. She boiled the potato and heated up the mushy peas. She chopped up the potato into a bowl, dumped the mushy peas on top, then stirred in cut-up sardines, the whole can full. The smell was unbelievable.
We chatted. Her boyfriend had dropped her off in Oban. He left, supposedly to get a camper he owned somewhere else in Scotland. She was to meet him in Tobermory the next day. I wonder…
It hadn't rained since Craignure, though the skies were lowering and gray. After supper I walked down a path through the sheep meadow to the shore. Sheep lowed at me or skittered out of my way. When I got down the hill to the lowlands, the path turned into a spinney of evergreen trees. I came out of the trees at the shore. The tide was out.
Pat had told me about the little pink flowers in the tidal flats. They stand fast when the tide comes in, little pink flowers under a covering of salt water. I didn't get to see that. But the little pink flowers were there. They started at the grass and flowed down the flats to the low-tide water line. To my right, a round high grassy place was isolated by the tides into the little island. An old fieldstone wall had been built across the flats and up onto the island. It was sitting on dry sand now at low tide. I imagine it disappears when the tide is full. I stood there for quite a while, just enjoying, until I got cold. I wended my way back up the hill, chatting with the sheep as they chewed grass.
It rained during the night, and the temperatures dropped. We had breakfast, packed up, and climbed up the driveway one last time. Before I left, I rounded the building to say “good-bye” to Hamish. He just looked at me. At 9:05 the bus from Craignure pulled over, and we climbed aboard for Tobermory. Tobermory is a picturesque place, and the biggest, or only, town on Mull. A long row of brightly colored buildings curve around the harbor to form the town's Main Street. The plan was to shop a bit, have a tea or two, and dawdle away the hours sitting on a bench on the harbor esplanade.
But it was cold. It spitted rain. Even the natives were in winter coats or padded vests and raincoats. We toured Main Street once and did a bit of shopping for shoelaces and gift tea towels, then had a cup of hot tea. After that Bob sat in a corner of the tearoom with the suitcase, sipped his tea, and read various newspapers and his book while I walked and shopped. In early afternoon we had fish and chips and hot tea in the tearoom. I walked some more and took some photos. It was too cold and drear to sit by the sea.
We left Tobermory early. I heard someone say that there was frost in the highlands last night. I think it was cold enough in Tobermory for frost on the fishing boats.
Back in Oban it was also cold and gray-inside and out. Our room at Thornloe has not got above 66 degrees for four days, and is usually closer to 64. The natives are comfortable at these temperatures. For them, it's normal.
We've enjoyed our last four days in Scotland. We've worked on the library computers, dined in cozy tearooms, shopped for used books and taken walks. We've hung over the rail on the downtown esplanade and studied the swans and gulls. The big ferries come and go. It's interesting to watch them dock, load, and unload in Oban's small protected harbor. Properly bundled up, we've sat on harborside benches and chatted with Scots, English, and the odd American.
Thursday night we went out to dinner and a local “Scottish” show. The meal was excellent. The show was entertaining. A fiddler and an accordianist played folk music. A piper, who had just won some big award, puffed and did step routines. Every time it was his turn to perform, he marched in from somewhere in the back of the room. As soon as the pipes swirled, people clapped and stood up to see him.
The best, and the most popular part of the show was a little girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years old, who danced to the piper and the others. In Scottish tartan, she danced the fling, the sword dance, and other folk dances. She was very, very good. For another act, she danced Irish folk dances in a green Irish country dress and white apron. She came on stage for her last set dressed as a JackTar sailor, right off a CrackerJack box. The piper piped hornpipe tunes, and she danced the hornpipe, leaping in the air like you only see in pictures. It was a two-hour show, and it just sped by. We strolled home in ten o'clock bright twilight. The sun was still above the sea.
I'm writing this on our last evening in Scotland. We have not in the past, nor surely never will have the luxuries at another B&B as we have had here at Thornloe. Breakfast is superb; grilled tomato halves with basil garnish, large fresh mushrooms sautéed in butter, perfectly done fresh eggs, and whole grain seedy toast. Every day a small packet of Scottish shortbread comes with the clean glasses. There are fresh white thick terry-cloth robes in every room to ward off the chills of the Scottish climate. Piles of movie tapes, music CDs, and movie DVDs are in the hallway bookcases and the glass conservatory lounge. Stacks of magazines are in the rooms and on the stair-landing window sills. Rows of books are also in the hallway bookcases and conservatory. When I complimented Valerie on her excellent establishment, she only said, “That's as it should be.”
We're pretty well packed. Val, our hostess, presented us with a bottle of wine this morning to help us pack. Tonight we're going to watch Entrapment, a late-90s movie with Sean Connery that was filmed at Duart Castle.
First we'll have crackers and cheese and some pears on our bed cum table. Next we'll draw a tub of hot water to warm up the bathroom and clean ourselves up. It's 65 degrees in this room as I write. Then we'll put on our fluffy warm terry-cloth robes, have some wine, crawl under the puffy duvet on the bed and watch the movie.
Tomorrow at 12:15 the train will pull out of Oban and carry us south to new surroundings and adventures. Come on along. Be sure to dress warmly and bring your umbrella.
TO DURHAM
June 17, Sunday
It was sunny in the early morning and when we shoved our suitcases into the taxi to go to the train station in Oban, but skies went gray even before the train pulled in. We left Scotland dressed in its usual gray and rugged garb, and headed south to Durham, England.
We each have a large and a small suitcase. These go into storage racks on the trains or bins on the coaches. Then we each carry a daypack with our reading books, bottles of water, and other oddments we might need on the trip; in this case, a seven-hour trip. For instance, this time I carried a pile of postcards to write, a pen, and a folder of addresses as well as a couple of pocket books. In addition to the daypacks, we each get an extra piece to carry. Bob gets the food waist pack and I get the computer briefcase.
When the train pulls in and the conductor signals to load, it's like sheep to the gate. Trying to get four suitcases and ourselves over the gap between train car and platform in the midst of this human avalanche is Herculean. Our plan is that Bob jumps aboard and I feed the suitcases to him -when we can connect with each other in the mob. Then he pushes them into the shelved storage hole at the back of the train car along with a dozen other people trying to store their luggage in the same small place.
We got the luggage stashed without too much hassle this time, found our reserved seats, and sank into them. It would be a three hours' trip to Glasgow, our first change-over. The computer briefcase rode snugly next to me on the seat. Bob plunked the food bag onto the table and shed his coat.
There are tables on these intercity trains. You have to share them with the folks seated opposite you, but it's still a nice luxury. The train left the station at 12:35. By 1:30 the food trolley trundled down the aisle offering sandwiches, crisps, snacks, and drinks. We each bought a hot black tea. Bob unzipped the food pack, and we had lunch. We've bought sandwiches from those trolleys before, and weren't thrilled with them. However, they might not have been any worse than our sandwich. We had bought a large BLT on a baguette from a deli the day before and even though it didn't have dressing on it, the edges were distinctly soggy. Not only that, but I had forgot that they put butter on deli sandwiches over here. Gah! I pulled my half of the sandwich apart. It was buttered, slathered with butter, on both side of the baguette. I scraped off what I could, poured on a packet of salad cream to hide the taste, and ate it. I was hungry. The second course was fresh pears and some chocolate. That was better.
The three hours went quickly. Neither of us read our books. Our route crossed the Scottish Highlands and the mountain scenery was spectacular. We have ridden this route before, the last time four years ago, but the view seemed even more beautiful than we remembered. At Glasgow we lugged the suitcases and ourselves off the train.
When you travel by train, there are continual broadcasted warnings to “Mind the gap!” There should be. The gap between the train car and the cement platforms look like a least a foot wide, and the thoughts of what would happen if your leg went down between are really scary. When you have a largish heavyish computer briefcase swinging from your shoulder and are carrying a weighty suitcase, that gap looks three feet wide. Sometimes if people on the platform see you pause at the car door, they will reach out and drag you over the gap, suitcase and all. That helps. Once all the four cases and our bodies are over the gap, it's duck soup. We just yank up the bag handles, roll off into the station, and look for our next train-where we'll get to do it all over again.
This time our next train was to Edinburgh. We had fifteen minutes to find it in the cavernous Glasgow rail station. Not a problem. Each platform has an arrivals/departure screen at the end of it. We passed two of them. Edinburgh was listed, but no platform number for the train. Just after the second berth, we ran into a crowd of people gathered near a screen. They were exclaiming and complaining about the Edinburgh posting, or rather the lack thereof. We just joined the crowd and waited to see what would happen.
Finally, a 5 appeared behind the Edinburgh trip number on the screen. We were standing at Platform Five! Everyone broke for the train that was sitting there. We were in coach F. By the time we had got to F the crowd had thinned and we were able to do our system of Bob inside and Ruth outside handing in cases. But Bob inside had a problem. This was a commuter run. There were no reserved seats, and no luggage racks. The aisle of the car was so narrow that none of our cases would fit down them, anyway. There was nothing for it but to pull down the two little jump seats in the between-car space and pile our suitcases in front of us. So we did.
The car behind our jump seats was a regular commuter car. The car in front of us was a “Business Class” car. It had full glass doors. Each individual luxurious seat inside had a small personal table and a wall lamp. A fellow in a suit with a briefcase stepped aboard, went to the glass doors, pushed a little light on one of them, and went into the Business Class. We were impressed.
Behind him came a young man with a huge suitcase. It was so heavy he had trouble lifting it over the gap, a young strapping fellow like him. He had just got aboard when the man came out of the Business Class, pushed passed the young fellow, and left the train. The young fellow said some things to the man's back. All this amused us for a few minutes. Then the conductor showed up out of the commuter car. He was extremely apologetic that there was no room for our luggage. When I explained that we couldn't even get it down the aisle, he said, “I know, I know.” We couldn't stay between cars like that though. He shooed the three of us into the business class car, and arranged our luggage to his satisfaction in the between-cars space.
We each had a little table, seat, and a lamp. What luxury! The young man was talkative. He had joined the armed services and was off to training camp. He might go to Afghanistan after training, or maybe Iraq. Probably Afghanistan. But before he did, he had saved some money and he was going to America, to Texas to hear country music. We told him to go to Tennessee instead. He bragged about drinking, and talked about various beers. In fact, since he had a half-hour between trains at Edinburgh, he'd just go have a pint, he would. We had an hour and a half of this until we made landing in Edinburgh Waverly Train Station. I felt sorry for the green country fellow. He's got a rough road ahead to adulthood.
Waverly is a huge station, and we had to go to an information station to find our train to Durham. At least we, also, had a half hour between trains and could take our time getting to the platform. Our stop, Durham, would be the second stop on a run from Edinburgh to London's King's Crossing station. Since this was a long run, we had reserved seats and there was a café car on the train. A café car offers light meals and sandwiches for take-away to your seat, and is usually open for the duration of the trip. We were only going to be an hour on this train, too, so planned to eat when we arrived at the hotel in Durham. The train was due in Durham at 7:20 p.m., and we'd be at the hotel shortly afterwards.
There were luggage racks, so we did the usual, stowed the cases, and took our seats. We had hauled that luggage on and off various trains five times by then, and were getting tired. I just put the computer case on the table and rested my arms on it. There was wireless internet on this train, and electric plug-ins for computers by each set of seats. But for the length of time, I figured it wasn't worth hauling everything out.
We traveled along the sea most of the way, so again the scenery was interesting. The train constantly slowed and speeded up. Sometimes it out and out stopped, and at one point we sat on a siding going nowhere for quite a while. There was an announcement that the train was going to be running late due to a failed service up the line. There was no knowing how soon we would reach any station, as trains were lining up to get into stations. People mumbled. A second announcement that the café car would be closed for an indefinite time due to the slowdown didn't make anyone happy, either. Since we were registered at the hotel for a late arrival, it didn't bother us.
We arrived in Durham nearly an hour late, and dragged those bags off the train for the last time. It was raining in Durham. We followed the signs to the taxi stand to the end of the platform.
“You've got to be kidding,” says I.
We were looking at two tiers of yellow-painted narrow cement stairs to go down-with the luggage. Bouncing one suitcase down the stairs isn't bad, but two at once, whew. Well, I'll give you a clue. We didn't do that. I stood with the cases while Bob bounced the two big ones down, one at a time. Then I carried the two little ones down. We reassembled at the bottom, rolled around a corner and down a covered walk, still following taxi signs, and rolled right into two tiers of yellow-painted narrow stairs going up. I can't remember what I said, but Bob started laughing. I can't really even remember our strategy for getting up those tiers of steps, but eventually we arrived at the top. Into the rain.
But at the taxi stand! We were in that taxi in no time, and ten minutes later stood at the door of the Bowburn Hotel, an historic building sitting three and a half miles out of Durham. We registered, received our room key, and the desk receptionist offered to take us to our room-upstairs, of course. He carried one suitcase; we struggled with the rest. We were REALLY tired. We got up one flight of blue flowered carpeted stairs. He crossed the wide balcony landing. We followed. Then he mounted a second, very narrow flight of stairs, steep and long with a turn in the middle. Of course, we get the garret room for the price we're paying. We called upon our last reserves of energy, seized those suitcases, and followed him brightly, chatting along the way.
For a garret room, it's very nice. The walls are freshly papered; the padded bed headboard matches the duvet and dust ruffle on the bed. There's also a sixteen-inch wide beam across the ceiling at about a third of the width of the room. Heavy dark rough wood posts support it - a foot from the side of the bed. You have to be real careful getting out of bed in the dark. Bob consulted the fire escape map on the back of the door, and announced that we have the smallest of the six rooms up here.
Why are we three and a half miles out of town? There's a major cricket competition going on in Durham now, and a room can't be bought anywhere in the city. Remember my making this booking at the counter of the Oban TIC because they couldn't do it for me? I told the Durham TIC agent, a friendly lady named Ann Flowers, what we required. She said it would be difficult because of the cricket matches, but she'd try.
She called me back with this en suite room in an historic hotel for just £55 a night including breakfast. The TIC has an arrangement with the hotel to provide rooms as B&B occasionally. It was three and a half miles out in the country, she said, but there were local buses we could take into Durham. Wonderful! It was even more wonderful when we found the price list for our room today and learned that the usual rate for it was £85 a night.
We have been eating breakfast in a very large glass conservatory overlooking the hotel gardens. Today we saw a rooster pheasant under the wisteria climbing up a garden wall. We've had supper in the bar lounge twice now, sipping a glass of stout and sopping our Yorkshire pudding in brown gravy over turkey slices. We lounge in deep Queen Anne chairs at a small table while enjoying this repast. The room is quietly elegant with deep white-painted ceiling moldings, a lamp at each table, heavy drapes, and waitstaff in black and white uniforms. People eating or drinking in the lounge are nicely dressed and talk in low tones. We're here for four days. Thank heaven for cricket matches. We could never afford this place on our own.
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