So much whisky, so little time!

A very happy Mum at the Laphroaig distillery! Mum became a friend of Laphroaig a few years ago after a friend gave her a bottle of whisky as a gift. Signing up as a friend gives you lease of a 1ft square plot of land at the distillery. Initially set up to protect the water source at Laphroaig, it is a great marketing stunt and on travelling to Islay, the lease holder can collect their annual rent, a dram of whisky from the distillery. The lease holder can also collect the gps co-ordinates to their plot and plant a flag in the ground (which we duly did!). Laphroaig won distillery tour of the year, so we went on the tour which was great, did a tasting and go to keep a Laphroaig glass at the end of it.

We also had an interesting day after we picked up two hitch hikers, well technically they weren't hitch hikers because they weren't actually thumbing a lift, more like waiting for a bus which they had missed at the airport. So we gave two Canadians (who were spending 24 hours on Islay) a lift to Port Ellen, we then met them an hour later at Laphroaig. We ended up spending the day with them, having lunch at Ardbeg (where they and mum tasted 6 whiskies), and on to Lagavulin before dropping them at their hotel in Port Ellen again. We headed on our way, went down a very rocky road next to the airport to a long sweeping, almost deserted, beach. Then we discovered they had left their camera on the back seat so it was back to Port Ellen to return it, before we drove back to the hostel in Port Charlotte! If only they had forgotten their bottle of whisky...