Day 16: Islay, Fort William

We were up early to get the bnb tidied, everything packed, and the ferry back to the mainland. Which meant that I barely slept, as I kept waking up, seeing it was bright outside through the rather thin curtains, and scrambling for my phone to make sure I hadn’t overslept. I hadn’t overslept when I did this at 1am, nor 3am, nor 5am, and I was still running on time when I got up at 6.45am.

This ferry was one of the older, less shiny ones in the CalMac fleet, so instead of lovely carpet and wood veneer, it was lino and melamine. But it fit our car, and floated, which was the important thing. Not knowing when lunch would be, as we’ve had a few experiences with delayed meals, I grabbed a second breakfast of all the good Scottish things, bacon, black pudding, potato scone, flat sausage, egg, and little potato rostis.

Once we drove off the ferry, the mission involved heading to Inveraray to rendezvous with A, who’s joining us for a few days. He’s also turning significant age later this year, and while we were hoping to have him on more of the trip, it just didn’t work out that way. Inveraray was picked as the most convenient meeting place, as M, P and A had lined up catching up with other friends, but life got in their way too. Coming soon to a cinema near you: A Donald in Campbell Heartland.

It wasn’t really that scary, we found a shady table in the garden of one of the pubs, and grabbed some lunch. I went with the venison burger, and sadly it wasn’t that great (though the chips were). Venison is a very low fat game meat, like kangaroo, and for foods like burgers there really needs something with a bit of juice, otherwise it’s all a bit dry. Some cheese may have helped, but overall I think venison is more suited to juicier presentations (so if all goes to plan I’ll be having venison lasagne tomorrow night, and am looking forward to that).

The drive to Fort William involved going through Glencoe, which is really one of those 2 for 1 places. First is that it’s an amazingly picturesque large valley, stunning to see and take in. Second there’s the historical side, as it was the area where in 1692 over 30 Donalds and MacDonalds were massacred by loyalist Campbells. The history around this is definitely being refined in terms of apportioning responsibility, there’s an amount of work seeming to indicate that this was on the explicit orders of King William (though my uninformed take is that it was probably one or two levels of bureaucracy below that) and also how willing or reluctant the Campbells were to carry out the orders. Some parts haven’t really seen much tweaking, it does still seem that during the various Scottish clan wars there were bigger massacres, however significantly, as the Donalds were guests at the time, then killing them was pretty bad form.

My mind did wander a little with some modern day perspective: the Glencoe massacre has become a major rallying point for Scotland; but if the same thing happened today in the US, with over 30 people shot and killed, all we’d see is a bunch of Republicans with NRA dollars in one hand and a picturebook version of the bible in the other mumbling bullshit about thoughts and prayers (unless it was 30 LGBTQIA+ people, then you’d see these soulless creeps rubbing the NRA cash and bible all over themselves with glee). And I reckon that there is a large crossover in the US folks who come to Scotland and act all sombre about the massacre, and the US folks that think everyone should have all the guns they want.

We also popped into the Clachaig Inn, a quirky pub that has a sign on entry, “No Hawkers or Campbells”. We caught them between service sessions, and weren’t up for beer, so just took some pictures and headed for the Glencoe Visitor Centre for a quick walk around, and a detour to the Glencoe massacre memorial, a cross on a hill down a narrow laneway in the town.

My Fort WIlliam bnb is quite quaint, except the weird staircase that winds up the centre, with doors oft the sides at weird levels: I think I’m on about 3/4 floor, while M and P are on the 1 1/2 floor. The curtains do look thicker, and I’ve also got a large hill between me and the rising sun, so I’m hoping I’ll be fine with sleeping.

Fort William seems to be an interesting little town, on the shores of a beautiful loch, with wonderful views all around. They seem to have a bit of hospitality staff shortages currently, probably not helped by brexit, so we’re again facing challenges in not being able to book anywhere for dinner. That seems to be the way Scottish bars and restaurants seem to cope with staff shortages, or because it’s tourist season they find a lot of missed reservations, but I’m not sure how taking no bookings helps.

Dinner was a decent steak and stout pie at the Grog and Gruel, and three excellent craft beers they had available: a very malty ale, followed by a lighter wheat beer that also contained elderflower, which was easy to drink and refreshing, and finally a stout to go with the pie. I also tried the vegetarian haggis, which was very interesting: it tasted nothing like haggis, but had a similar colour and consistency. It seemed to be built around using crushed walnuts, and lacked the punchy pepper of haggis: if you put some on my plate without telling me what it was trying to be, I’d have enjoyed it immensely, but once it was identified it didn’t really seem the same thing.

Finally it was a whisky at the Ben Neville Bar, I went for a Ben Nevis Distillery 10yo. I’ve never had a bad dram ffrom there, and this was no exception, very creamy and an aftertaste that delivered several solid stone fruit notes. Gorgeous. Stepping out of the bar I was gently accosted, as I was wearing my Clouds t-shirt, which prompted a young lady to point at my t-short and remark, “That’s My Friend!” There are Australians everywhere.

Then it was time for a quick walk before heading back to the bnb. Tomorrow’s plan is breakfast at 8.30pm, a stroll to check out coffee options , other town shopping, After some sleep.