Once we arrived in Tarbert, we spent some time exploring the ruins of the castle. The weather wasn’t great, but it wasn’t too bad. After some time wandering the ruins, we headed into town to =find some dinner before finally heading to the ferry for the trip to Islay!
Looking back on Tarbert, from up on the Castle grounds.
Tarbert Castle
We parked at the foot of the hill that lead up to the castle, and were lucky that the rain had mostly subsided. It was a short walk up a steep path that eventually opened up into a small plateau. As you walked up the steep path, you were threading the needle between a few existing houses. It was pretty cool to see the way the “new” homes were using the land - it was clear most of the their back yards were built into the old fortifications. Eventually the trail lead us up to the castle grounds, and opened up to the views out to the ruins.
As you walk up the steep hill towards the castle grounds, the ruins of the castle suddenly unfold in front of you.
The castle had been there since time immemorial, probably as a hill fort. There were old walls, separate from the "new" fortifications. They figure the proper castle was built in the late 1200s and was refurbished and expanded in 1325 by Robert the Bruce. It was repaired again in 1425 by James IV, where canons and other artillery were added. The castle continued until the 1760s when it fell into disrepair.
There’s not much left of it now, but they have built up a viewing platform that lets you get up close, and you can walk around the remaining bits. It’s quite cool, and we spent some time exploring.
We were up on the castle grounds for about half an hour, when the rain started again. It was time for us to find some dinner anyways.
We did a walk up and down the high street, but the options were pretty limited. We ended up in a small cafe - I had fish and chips and Jus went with the Mac and Cheese. The food was pretty good and we were hungry! After dinner, it was time to head to the ferry!
I love this photo - the perspective is great - it makes me look like a giant on the landscape.
This sign was on the local pub - gotta love their sense of humor!
Ready to head out on the ferry to Port Askaig on Islay!
The ferry was a short, 15 minute drive south of Tarbert. With our place on Galiano, we have a lot of experience with ferries, so we were interested to see how this one works!
The terminal is a tiny thing, sitting at Port Kennycraig. There was nothing in the “terminal” - no food options, nothign to do. Obviously they do not get multiple sailing waits on these ferries…
We were a good half hour ahead of the cut off, and it was quick and easy to get checked in. We were in "aisle 1", but towards the back. But it seemed like a lot less cars than our usual Galiano ferry. There were a number of large trucks, maybe 4 or 5.
I think that we had expected that it was going to be a businer ferry, or at least a higher volume heading over to Islay. From our online research, we were expecting quite a sizeable vessel, but that turned out to be a little off - it was a big ship, but didn’t carry as much traffic as we might have expected.
Waiting in the ferry line - it wasn’t as bad as we had expected!
We explored the terminal a little bit (there was not much to see…) before noticing our ship coming up the straight. It was certainly a different type of ship from what were were used to, and given the large expanse of open ocean ahead of us, I guess that was a good thing.
The ship was bigger, longer but narrower than our ferry. This one only had one car deck and was not close to full. Getting onto the ferry was a little more difficult than we were used to - the boarding ramp was a bit of a steep incline. Our car was fine, but if you had a proper sports car, I’m not sure I would have wanted to try and get it up and over the lip of the boarding ramp!
Once we had loaded, they put us off to the sides under an overhang, leaving a lot of space in the middle for the trucks. It was quite interesting to see - they maximized the apce well, even though they really didn’t need to. I’m guessing there’s an issue of weight distribution, given that we were headed out to open ocean! Boarding was fairly quick, and soon we were underway!
Justine managed to snag us a couple of seats in the "bar" (a lounge area with a bunch of communal seating), but it was fine and gave us enough room to relax. We had a view out the window and could watch the trip go by. The ferry was a little less than 2 1/2 hours, taking us into Port Askaig on the north side of the island of Islay, with the Island of Jura to the north. The rain had started again, so the visibility was poor for most of the journey. Thankfully the seas were fairly calm.
The bar was open and we relaxes and played cards the whole way over.
Departing from port, on our way to Islay!
Part way out to sea.
It was a fairly long trip - a little over two hours.
But eventually we arrived at our destination on Islay!
The trip was originally scheduled to make port on the south side of the island at Port Ellen (which was where our accommodation was), but for some reason they had to shift it. It meant that we had a 40 minute drive south to get to Port Ellen. In the dark.
Arriving into Islay!
The roads on Islay are something else - narrow, winding, tight with vegetation and at time stone walls that seem much too close. And the drivers coming the other way are flying by at full speed, obviously used to the tight conditions. It’s a little unnerving, but I’ve driven in the UK a for bit, so it was really just a matter of getting used to it again. Until we turned onto the road to Port Ellen and discovered Islay’s single lane roads!
These are another step toward crazy - only a single lane wide with the odd pull out here no there to allow traffic to pass. And with the island being mostly flat, you have no idea how far away those lights in the distance are. Mix that in with frogs hopping across the road, and what we think were young badgers, it made for an intense introduction to driving on Islay.
But eventually we made it. It took us some time to find our cottage, but when we did we were quite pleased with the results. The cottage was facing the ocean, looking out over one of the bays in Port Ellen, with a view over to the old (no longer operational) Port Ellen Distillery. It looked like a great home base for the next couple of days.
We got settled in, opened a drink and after a very long stretch of travel, had made it to our ultimate destination.
Finally “home” in Port Ellen.