There is not a great deal to report on today. We traveled overnight from the Orkneys to The Isle of Mull. We lay anchor in the bay of Tobermory, the capital of Mull. I wrote of the Isle in an earlier post when we passed through it on our way to the Isle of Iona. Mull is a fairly large island, but with only a population of about 3,000. My guess is that probably half the population lives in Tobermory. It was a cloudy, windy and rainy morning with predictions of a lot of rain this morning. Fortunately by 9:00 AM the rain had essentially stopped.
Since Tobermory doesn't have a pier large enough for our ship, we had to go ashore in zodiacs. Our small ship is too small to have regular tenders.
You can see the looks of excitement on Kay and Janet's face as we head for shore.
Leaving the M/V Corinthian behind.
The excursion was to a local farm where Isle of Mull cheese is produced.
I have been to more cheese production facilities than I care to count and wasn't especially looking forward to this one. Our tour was led by the Matriarch of the business and she was a delightful little lady and quite a ball of fire.
This is just a small portion of the cellar where the 25kg wheels of cheese are aged.
The farm, as are most of the farms on the islands, is totally sustainable. Nothing goes to waste. The whey from the cheese production had been used for fertilizer, but one of her sons (or grandsons), I can't remember, came up with the idea of using it to distill alcohol for gin. Since whey contains a large amount of sugar, this made sense.
The first batch is not yet completed, but it is getting close. The entire setup was built by the family.
In the milking barn, Kay spotted this piece of pottery. It is a beautiful example of Rockingham pottery. It is in excellent condition, other than the horns are broken off. We would love to have this in our yellow ware collection.
As we left town, I saw this small building. It seems every small town and village has at least one whisky distillery.
The overall experience of this mornings excursion was chaotic. The zodiacs could only carry 10 passengers each, and I believe they had two zodiacs. This meant it took a total of about 8 trips to get everyone from ship to shore (and 8 back). We spent more time waiting to leave and for the other passengers to arrive than we did touring.
We were late getting back to the ship for lunch. Another trip was planned for this afternoon to explore town and hike to a lighthouse. I felt my social reserve had expired for the day and I declined to take another zodiac trip into town. Kay, Janet and Carl did go. They left at about 2:00 PM and it is not 5:30 as I write this. I hope they have had a good time. I did. I napped, drank coffee, read and worked on the blog.
It's now about 9:00 PM. The guys got back from their shore excursion and said it was a very good walk, but they were all tired. We had our port talk for tomorrow and the captain announced to expect 8 foot waves during the night and a rocking ship.
Dinner was very good. We were joined by Jeremey, the Hotel Manager on the ship. He is a young Frenchman and was pleasant dinner company.
After dinner we were entertained by a Gaelic choir from the Island. They were incredible, although we couldn't understand any of the words, the sound was beautiful.
Overnight we are traveling to the Isle of Islay, the southernmost of the Outer Hebrides.
Until then....
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