Musings on Mull

About two months ago, I procrastinated an afternoon away, avoiding grading, by looking at travel options for Ben and I on one of our free weekends during the Scotland program. I am undoubtedly excited about our Spain and Morocco adventure (no durrrhh) but gave myself free reign to make this last weekend trip to one of my priority travel destinations, as Spain is Ben’s dream. I’d been thinking about Sweden and Denmark, about Basque country in Northern Spain, etc…but reminded myself that less is more when it comes to travel and “settled” on Mull. I’d been hoping to go to Iona, particularly, for several years, and I’m so glad we did.

I gave an exam on Thursday morning and we caught the noon-ish train to Oban. It was a promising start: our train got delayed for nearly an hour so that the British Transport Police could come on board and arrest someone. I was fine with this as I had a delicious salad and Vampire Weekend on my i-pod, which proved to be just the soundtrack I needed to get our adventure off on a good foot. I seat-danced my way to Oban. Why is that Horchata song so friggin’ awesome, by the way? “Here comes a feeling you thought you’d forgotten.” They so get me.

We had to run to catch our ferry, so we could catch the last bus to Fionnphort, the western-most community of any size on the Ross of Mull, where you catch the ferry to Iona. Ben and I are no suckers and sat outside on the ferry to Mull—we had a sunny afternoon, bright blue skies, and even a lighthouse to entertain us. Even I enjoyed watching the sea gulls coast along with the ferry, and we both enjoyed watching the kids race each other along the ferry’s deck.

Mull is exceptionally beautiful. The greens are greener, the blues bluer, the air clean, the sheep freshly-shorn. Much of the bus trip to Fionnphort was along a Loch, and the single-track road is lined with foxglove and heather. The bus trip itself took some stomach-steeling; lots of stopping for less-experienced single-track road drivers, and, occasionally, for a wayward sheep in the road.

Once there, Ben and I checked in to our B&B and headed for dinner at the only game in town. Without doing any research, my guess is that Fionnphort exists entirely for fishing and tourism to Iona. There only seemed to be about thirty people in the village that night, period, and I’d guess that twenty were tourists, like us. I had a lot of fun at dinner watching the 4-year-old fraternal twins seated next to us make a mess, cry when forced to wear socks, etc.. .and thought about how much Ben and I will appreciate these quiet trips and leisurely dinners when we are no longer just two but three and four. At one point, the little girl offered to share her ice cream with her mother, but warned her, hand to shoulder, to “Promise (me) Mummy, promise me, to be careful. This ice cream is cold.” It was fantastically dramatic and I loved it.

After dinner we hiked up to a vista where I managed to end up calf-deep in a puddle but had a great view of the sea and Iona. I felt that this necessitated some hot chocolate, for cold-prevention, upon our return to the B&B.

I don’t have the skill set to tell you how I felt about Iona. If I had been there on my own, I would have laid spread-eagle and face down on the ground and wept, but thought this might embarrass Ben a bit. We arrived early on Friday morning—the ferry crossing only takes about ten minutes—and wandered past some organic gardens and the “town” itself in some fairly heavy rain. Along the way people would apologize to us about the weather, but rain seemed very appropriate, somehow. I kept reminding Ben of how much more difficult it would have been for St. Columba when he arrived in 563 and had no hotel, etc… to stop into for warmth. I had this insight that I have become my mother, who, on our road trips to Georgia as a child, would respond to our complaints about the distance with “every time the wheel turns we are that much closer” and, “Kids, you can thank Dwight David Eisenhower for this excellent interstate system we are enjoying” only to be met with groans and dramatic sighs.

We were there before the Abbey opened for the day, which was very special. I had about thirty minutes to quietly reflect in the cloisters, watching raindrops in a puddle, and, for nearly as long, we had the abbey entirely to ourselves. There are groups of people who live in Iona and work on peace and justice issues, including on the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, and it felt like a place of great import to me.

Soaking, we spent the morning at the St. Columba hotel, where I got stuck into my excellent Bill Bryson book and warmed my feet tucked under Ben’s butt. He’s a good man. There was a family there, the matriarch and patriarch of a family who were from Inverness and were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. She was so good with her grandchildren, even the surly pre-teens, and would introduce them to everyone in the room as they walked through, “here’s our Callum,” etc…Callum in particular was a bit surly, but, I would have been too when I was eleven and stuck in a hotel on Iona in the rain. Oh, Callum, if only I could convey to you how special those times are and how much you will miss them when they are done.

The sun came out as we went to lunch and had a totally awesome meal. We posted a post-card to my folks and headed back to Fionnphort, then to Craignure, through Salen and on to Tobermory (Dad follows us on the map.) We were fortunate to have sun all afternoon and arrived in time to wonder around town, check into our B&B, and hike to dinner with a good view of the mainland to our east. Dinner was good—scallops—and sleep came early that night. All that fresh air makes me tired.

I got lost in my head a bit on Friday afternoon. Robyn: See Neurotic. I might have hit another travel U, or just felt tired, but I was somewhere else for awhile that afternoon and evening. A good night sleep helped me to come around.

Saturday was a perfect day. We slept in until nine, chatted to our B&B proprietor for a bit, and walked into town taking pictures along the way. I sat at the harbor for about an hour while Ben took pictures, just watching the people and the birds, and, surprisingly, enjoyed both. (They kept their distance.) Mull boasts over 200 species of bird which I’d obviously neglected to realize prior to planning this trip, but I was more terrified of the stories of rat attacks that I was reading in my Bryson book to worry too much about the seagulls. We wondered and shopped all morning, I searched, unsuccessfully, for maps of Mull (this is good news for our framing budgets) and spent the afternoon at a coffee shop where Ben, to his credit, had tea while I enjoyed a strawberry cream and rose cream chocolate. We had sun all day.

Saturday night we had the best meal of our time in Mull, which is saying something after Iona. Café Fish is a small place above the ferry terminal in Tobermory and we split crab cakes (they smelled so good that we dove in before I snapped a photo) and I had a langoustine and lobster caesar salad. Matt Long, brother, it was divine. I had a pavlova for dessert and Ben had sticky ginger toffee pudding that he hasn’t stopped talking about since. We’ve come to expect this behavior from me, but it must be something special for Ben to perseverate. It had started to rain while at dinner, so we waited for a taxi along the water and tucked into bed, warm and content.

On Saturday, we played a game called “Cultural D&*@%!bags” to see whose culture would most embarrass themselves by being the “Ugly Americans.” Sadly, we Americans typically fare very well in this competition, but I’m happy to report that we did not win this round. There were six contenders in Mull this weekend: An English Stevie Nicks impersonator who was rude to a waitress in Fionnphort, a narcissistic Aussie who loudly told her companion at a pub that she had traveled, Elizabeth Gilbert-style, to get over a heartbreak and that “EVERYONE was begging me to publish my blog into a book but I thought, no, that’s not my direction, anyone can publish a book,” a beautiful but loud English woman who had conversations across the bus and yelled at her elderly mother to “hurry up,” another Aussie who’d had too much Botox, an American woman who had “the newest I-phone available” and our victor, an Englishman, who could not have been ruder to a waitress at Café Fish and found generally everything—the restaurant, the company, the food, etc…to be dissatisfying. The English win this round, although, statistically, they stood a good chance. Mull seems to be a popular holiday destinations for Scotland’s southern neighbor.

On Sunday, it was back to buses, ferries, trains, etc… to go home, but we decided it had been enough. Enough special. On the ferry home we encountered several of the same people we’d seen or met along the way, including the family from the restaurant in Fionnphort, today having an adventure with light-up pens that their parents had bought them in the ferry gift shop. Ben noted that I was turning into a bit of a creeper when it came to watching children and he might be right.

After a wander around Oban, I had the chance to grade and do lesson plans on the train and listen to music that is easily ten years out of date on my i-pod. There was beautiful sun on the way home and an entertaining group of boy scouts who were speaking, depending on who you ask, Gaelic, Dutch or Italian. I think we all know who foolishly suggested Italian.

Ben is always encouraging me to meditate and this weekend I realized I do, just in my own way. Do I reflect on issues of great, spiritual importance? No. Instead, I think about packing organic school lunches for my hypothetical children and ask Ben questions like, “Do kids like Pimento cheese? Bruschetta?” I think about the tours I could offer if I were a bed and breakfast proprietor, and things I want to cook when I am home, and classes I want to teach, and places I want to go. But this weekend gave me the time to do the kind of meditating that I do best, on the things I hope for and dream about, and that was a real privilege.

Three more days in Scotland; the students leave Thursday a.m., and we are with Esme on Thursday night. Saw the virtues of traveling with backpack only this weekend, but don’t know that I can do it for two weeks. If we bring a computer, will keep you posted on Spain and Morocco adventures. Thanks for reading.

Love,Robyn