Ayrshire+ Photographs

Back to home territory and Culzean Country Park for a brisk, sunny but coolish walk.

Three views:

Arran of course from just beside the Home farm.

Then the Castle from the same place.

From further down the cliff path a view of Paddy’s Milestone.

The last of my away day pictures for the time being!

Taken from the ferry on the way back to Oban, the sun was highlighting the Mamores and Ben Nevis.

Today’s selection of photographs come from Aros Park at Tobermory and in Tobermory itself.

The first looks over the Sound of Mull to Ardnamurchan with Ben Hiant which, at 528m is the largest hill on that peninsula.

A long view of Tobermory itself.

The building down left was originally the cask store for Tobermory Distillery, but is now flats.

Just in case you got the impression that the weather for the week was perfect, here is a picture I took on the Thursday sitting in the car at Craignure. Less than 5 miles away towards the Iona end, it was falling as snow.

The following photographs were taken from Caliach Point.

The first is looking towards the mountains of Skye.

Then looking west towards Coll.

Then further south towards Tiree.

and lastly looking east back over the way we had come.

Later that day we were relaxing in front of the wood fire in Ard Shellach, the house we’ve stayed in for the previous two vsits to Mull. There is surprisingly little ash left to clean out in the morning.

Loch Ba, Loch of the Cattle, is the prettiest fresh water loch on Mull and is approximately 3 miles long.

This is at the northern end of the loch as we headed down the track.

This was taken at Knockantivore, about 2/3rds of the way down, looking back north.

I didn’t photograph this little one at the north end of the loch as we went down as it had evidently just been born and didn’t look very pleased with the world at the time (the mother was decidely nervous as well!). However when we returned it was obviously much happier.

Loch Ba flows out by a short river into Loch Na Keal, a large sea loch which comes close to cutting Mull into two islands.

If you look very carefully at the first photograph, you’ll see one of the reasons we went to Mull at this time of year.

Loch Frisa might be a long loch, but it can still freeze.

Fancy a white edged tree anyone?

The view of the hills is quite superb.

This is a blow up from the first photograph and you can just make out the White-tailed Eagles

From Craignure we made our way up to Tobermoray, the only town on Mull, half of it via single track road with passing places – terribly civilised behaviour of all the drivers making sure traffic got the appropriate turn to go.

The Saturday saw us sailing from Oban to Craignure on Mull.

This the our ferry approaching the pier at Oban.

A view over the stern of the ferry as we sailed towards Craignure.

A view of Duart Castle from the ferry.

Whilst we were staying at the Loch Melfort hotel we went for a walk along the Crinan Canal. As you can see the ice made the canal impassable.

In fact the canal was closed and drained in one section to allow a new waterproof membrane to be inserted in the footpath.