We made it!

We left the house soon after 4am this morning and had a dark, twisty ride down to the ferry terminal at Kennacraig, arriving around 5.45. After checking in we joined the standby queue and when the rest of the cars and lorries had loaded we fortunately got on.

The ferry sailed a little earlier than the planned 7am and we had a smooth ride across to Port Ascaig, on Islay - pronounced Ila for those who don't know it. It took a little less than a couple of hours and for the first half hour we watched the sun rising above our wake - my Blip today. We learnt later that our booked ferry of 1pm was cancelled, so we were glad that we'd gone for the earlier one!

We set off for Portnahaven on the western side, calling in at Bowmore first to visit the Tourist Information, have a look round the round church - see extra - and have a coffee, then continued on the road and popped in to the Bruichladdich Distillery to arrange a 'Gin Tour' at four pm'

We arrived in Portnahaven, drove round to the pub to book a table for dinner tonight, then found the house and unpacked the car. Then we drove back to Port Charlotte for lunch at the hotel, had a good look round the Museum of Islay Life and returned to the Distillery where we found that four of the six booked for the tour hadn't arrived so we had a personal tour - just the two of us with guide Ingie. Very interesting, and we sampled some extremely small gins flavoured with a variety of tonics. Ingie then poured the surplus gins into tiny bottles, added a couple of bottles of Elderflower Tonic, and sent us on our way!

We're now about the return to the pub for dinner and come back for an early night!