Islay, Scotland

The reason we were on Islay was mostly to do with me. Justine loves Scotland, but I love the scotch that they make on Islay. It is typically peaty and smoky, and I love it! There are many distilleries here, with a history dating back as far as anyone can remember. The official distilleries date back to the early 1800s, and I was hoping to get to see as many as possible. But we also wanted to do some other things, including some sightseeing and hiking in the Scottish countryside. It was a lot to try and pack into a couple of days. And we had the notorious Scottish weather to deal with.

This is going to be a bit of a long post, with lots of photos of golf courses and distilleries - and maybe a Hairy Coo or two along the way…

Golfing, Hiking and Scotch!

Monday, I was up before dawn, hoping that the weather gods might be on my side. All night we had listened to the rain and wind howling across the bay, and when I looked outside, it was lashing down.

I have been a golfer for most of my life - I think I picked it up when I was 15 or 16 and have played varying amounts over the years. Of late, that’s generally need 9 holes at the little course on Galiano - not a real golf course by any stretch, but it’s fun, close by and great value. It was actually one of the things that sealed Galiano as a place for us to be long term.

I’m a pretty bad golfer, but somehow I have come to terms with this and figured out a way to manage to enjoy it nonetheless. As Scotland is the ancestral home of golf, one of my goals for this trip was to play a round at the golf course here. There’s only one on all of Islay, and it’s a really nice one, attached to a very high end hotel. It’s also a links style course, which is my favorite kind of golf course and typical of the courses you find in Scotland. So waking up to the weather we were getting was disappointing. I had one very small window of opportunity.

The Machrie Hotel (and golf course pro shop) in the pre-dawn light.

A bit more of the hotel, as seen from beside the putting green and the entrance to the first tee.

At the front door to the hotel, they leave out rainboots for guests to borrow. They know their weather…

The forecast was calling for it to clear up, so I thought I would let Jus sleep in, and I’d drive over to the course to have a look. If the weather was looking better, I still might play.

On the way to the course, the rain lightened up. It must have been raining a lot, as the main road was completely flooded in one place! It actually remained flooded the entire time we were on Islay. In a place that gets a lot of rain, it’s surprising they don’t have better water management.

Despite these issues, I made it over to the course. It was still raining, if only lightly, so I sat outside the hotel in the car trying to figure out if it was worth playing or not. Eventually, I decided that I was not going to have another opportunity, and headed into the pro shop.

And they were not open yet.

I was about to give up on it, when the pro shop manager came in and opened up. They had openings (no one else was scheduled to play for another hour), and were able to get me shoes and clubs.

I also decided on a power cart, to try and speed up the round. While it would have been much nicer to walk, the threat of rain and the need to get the round done as quickly as possible made the call. It all ended up working perfectly, but it would have been much more enjoyable to walk.

Especially that course. I have to give a shout out to the pro shop manager - the service was amazing, and they really went way above and beyond to get me out and for me to enjoy the round. One of the things the course does is give you a yardage book with all the details of every hole, best lines to take for drives and details like that for each hole. Only high end courses do this (included), and what a difference it made!

Finding the first tee was a challenge. While there are markers and signs, the whole landscape looks so consistent that it’s sometimes hard to know where you are supposed to go.

This is what I had to look forward to the whole day. This little book was a lifesaver.

One of the things links courses are known for are the crazy bunkers, and this course had a number of them. You can see the steep, tall face and I was fortunately enough to almost completely avoid them on my round. Almost

The golf course is called the Machrie Links. And what can I say - it’s easily the most spectacular course I’ve ever played. The service is impeccable, right from the moment I walked in. It’s a very pricey round of golf, but who knows if I’ll ever make it back.

I’m very glad I played. I also got unbelievably lucky with the weather. Once the guys got me set up with my cart, water for the round, and even a small bottle of scotch (from the hotel) for later, the rain let up and the skies even cleared a bit. There was blue sky to be seen! And gale force winds, but more on that later… It seems that the weather gods were indeed looking kindly on me.

I started off at the putting green and putted a few to get a sense of the greens and the rental clubs. The clubs were high end and the same brand as my own, so it was at least similar. The putting green was soaked - half of the cups were full of water, and the green was soggy in places. There was not a lot to be learned, so I didn’t stay long. Plus I really needed to get through the round, if we were to do all the other things we wanted to do that day.

After a very short warm up, I headed over to the first tee. The first hole was a good start - open and straight forward, and I hit a great drive down the middle of the fairway! I was off to a good start.

The green on the first hole. I hit a really good tee shot (surprisingly) and actually hit my second shot a bit long and over the green (you can see the ball here). Sadly my putting was not great (again, not a surprise for the first time on the greens) and I ended up with a bogey. Hey, if I played bogey golf on this course, I would have been thrilled!

The first bunch of holes were a mixed bag, in terms of my play. I hit some good shots, then some horrible ones. But I was playing bogey golf, which is fine for me. The course itself was amazing- in impeccable shape, with perfectly manicured greens, well maintained bunkers and fairways that might have been greens on some courses that I have played. It was an amazing experience

I think this was the second hole - how are you supposed to know where to drive the ball? From this view, it just looks like an open pasture. But you trust the little blue book, hit a drive, and in this case magically found myself in the middle of a perfect fairway. It’s such a cool course.

This was pretty typical - a green nestled in the mounds of fescue grass. If you missed the green, there was almost no hope of finding your ball. Proper links style golf.

There are so many blind shots on the course, that they place bells for the players to ring when they have cleared the area. While there was no one behind me, it was still fun to ring the bell!

The bunkers are just so amazingly well maintained.

The back tees on the 7th hole, overlooking the ocean. From this hole onwards, the course really became spectacular. It was beautiful up until now, but this was something else.

The corse gets very memorable as you get closer to the ocean. On the 6th hole I hit an OK drive, but did not realize what the second shot looked like. I was a bit offline so it was a blind second shot (there were many blind shots on this course), and it was hitting down and into a bowl, with huge dunes surrounding the green on three sides. And of course, covered in deep fescue. I hit the shot long, but found my ball (luckily).

The 7th hole is the signature on the course, running parallel to the ocean. It’s a beautiful hole, and I did as suggested and walked back to the back tees to take in the view.

Looking down the 7th hole from the tee box. The ocean is to the left.

On the 8th, the hole was playing dead into a gale force wind. It was unlike anything that I have experienced. I was driving the ball well - I had a bunch of drives up near 300 yards - but my drive on the 8th, which I think I hit pretty well, barely went 100 yards. It took me 4 shots to get to the green. The hole also has this part of the fairway that drops down at least 50-60’ - and of course one of my shots came up short, and I watched it roll down into the bottom of the fairway. I was left shaking my head.

You can’t really see it from the photo, but that gulley is way down below the green. And of course, being into the wind, my shot ended up hitting the front edge of the green, then rolling all the way down the hill. This was easily my worst hole of the round, but it was so crazy I couldn’t really get upset.

The 9th, a 115 yard par 3 was somehow worse. Now I normally need less than a sand wedge to carry 115 yards - especially downhill. But this was into the gale, so I clubbed up to a 9 iron, figuring I had lots. The ball didn’t come close to making it to the green. It was crazy. And so much fun.

Hole #9 - it looks so easy. It wasn’t. Who knew there could be more than a 3 club wind. I probably could have hit a 7 iron. But such a beautiful spot, looking out over the ocean.

My game turned around on the back nine. I managed a few pars and a birdie! The wind being mainly at my back certainly help a ton. Plus the wind softened a bit and blue sky made an appearance. It was such an amazing morning. The birdie was memorable as I actually drove the green on a par 4! This might be the first time ever for me.

My tee shot on a shortish par 4. With the wind at my back, I managed a tee shot over 300 yards and it rolled up. On another day, the pin might have been on the lower tier, but today it was on the upper. I almost made the eagle put, bt the birdie was something special.

The next hole was a par 3. I had spectators, as the green crew was working nearby, and I managed to step up to the occasion and hit the green with my tee shot. A good two put later, I was riding pretty high. Birdie - Par was amazing!

That was a pretty good tee shot. Sadly I missed the birdie put by a hair. Still, I’ll take a par every time.

The 17th is another signature type hole where you have to hit a completely blind tee shot over a a hill and hope for the best. It’s such a fun course and I hope I can go back - it needs to be played more than once.

There were many holes that had amazing views out over the ocean.

Just off one of the fairways, some cool mushrooms!

I did eventually put one in a bunker. But I managed to get out in one shot, and did not have to go backwards!

A cool slug - like our banana slugs, but with a black head.

The 18th tee box. I was sad that it was over, but exhilarated on how great a round it was. Totally worth the money!

It was a long par 5, and I was hitting my third shot from quite a ways back.

While the 18th hole wasn’t my best, it was a great ending to a spectacular round.

I was able to get through the round in about 2 1/2 hours, which is pretty amazing. Like I said earlier, it would have been nice to walk, but time was a factor as we had a busy day ahead. I drove back to our cottage and met up with Justine, and we walked over to the main street and went to a cafe and got breakfast and lunch to go. We had a tight timeline. We had booked a scotch tasting experience at Lavavulin at 1:30, and needed to be there at 1:15.

As we wanted to explore more of the island, we had picked a short (3 km) hike on the southwest side of the island called the Mull of Oa. It is a nature reserve, and the descriptions had said it was a good place to see golden eagles and other birds, so that seemed right up our alley.

Our hike at the Mull of Oa, on the wild, west coast of Islay.

The drive out went through Port Ellen and past a new distillery being built. It looks like it will be a pretty amazing facility when completed, but they have a ways to go. The road through town quickly turned into another crazy single lane road, but we were fortunate in not hitting any traffic - on the way out anyways.

We eventually got to the car park for the hike and started the walk out on the well marked trail. A small group of high school age kids showed up in a school bus at about the same time, so we let them get a head start and put some distance between us.

On our hike, we had lots of company - mostly sheep!

The Mull of Oa is a nature reserve on the southwest corner of the island, and houses The American Monument, a 131 m tall monument built by the Red Cross to honour sailors from two shipwrecks off the Islay coast in 1918 during World War One.

This was our objective on the hike - the American Monument. An impressive structure in any sense, but I have no idea how they built it here, in the middle of nothing. Where did they get all the rock - we were a good hundred feet or more up a cliff from the water.

The first stage of the hike up to the monument passes through open grassland/pastures and Justine was very excited to see our first Highland Cattle, affectionately known as Hairy Coo. There was a small herd of the them fairly early in the hike, and a few roaming up near the monument. The hike lead us through a swampy area of heather, across a boardwalk and started to rise up to the monument sitting on the cliff edge high above the ocean.

Our first selfie of the day, with the monument in the background. The wind was fierce!

A Hairy Coo! It could not have posed any more perfectly.

The trail back wove along steep cliffs, with long drops down to the ocean.

We made sure to stay a respectful distance from the coes. They do have big horns, even if they seem pretty docile.

The scenery was spectacular, but the wind was crazy!

Sunshine and blue skies - quite the departure from the start of the day.

The views were amazing, but we couldn’t stay long as the wind was crazy! It was almost strong enough to literally blow you off your feet. And with the long drop down to the ocean, you really didn’t want to be up there for long! Plus we needed to get back.

We took the slightly longer trail back, weaving along the cliff edge for a while, before the path turned back inland through farm fields. I love that about the UK - everyone just accepts people wandering across their land, and the walkers always treat it with respect. We had to walk back through a herd of Justine’s cattle, but they did not seem the least perturbed by our wandering amongst them.

After getting back to the car we had about half an hour to get back to the distillery for our tour. The drive was supposed to be 25 minutes, so it looked like our day was working out well. On the way out, as we were traveling back along the single lane road (and calling ti a “road” is giving it more credit than it deserves - it’s a driveway), we were coming down a small hill and came face-to-face with a transport truck coming straight at us! Cars were bad enough on this narrow, winding single lane track, but now we had an 18-wheeler!

He flashed his lights at us a couple of times, which we eventually figured out that he wanted us to come towards him. There was a pull-out close by, and we were able to maneuver through, each of us giving enough space on the narrow lane. It was a bit nerve wracking! But we made it through and were able to make it back to Lagavulin on time for our tasting.

Let the pilgrimage begin - this was why we were in Islay, starting with the big one, Lagavulin!

There are three distilleries east of Port Ellen - Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg, and all three were high on my list of places to visit. There’s a walking path that takes you to all three, but sadly we did not have enough time to do the walk. So we drove out to Lagavulin and parked in time to head in for the tour.

As we were heading there, we had a small wildlife encounter! We were driving along the narrow country lanes when we noticed a man with a bunch of photography gear off to the side of the road. He waved at us to slow down, right as three deer came bounding out from the side of the road! They ran up the road for a bit, before jumping up and over a stone fence and heading off into the fields. All three had nice antlers, and were the only deer we saw in Scotland while we were there.

The distillery was everything that I expected, with the beautiful whitewashed buildings sitting right on the ocean. I had booked the “Warehouse Experience” a tasting of 5 scotches in the distillery warehouse. When we arrived, I was a bit dismayed to see how many people were waiting for the tour. I think it ended up being 44 people in total. That turned out to be a non-issue as they had a good set-up in the warehouse, with chairs set out around a series of casks - and they pulled the whiskey that were were tasting straight from the casks!

THis was our warehouse experience, which was excellent. The dude with the white hair in the middle was everything that you could have hoped for, and then some. We got a pretty great tasting experience out of it.

We were given some pretty great tasing glasses to take with us.

For a number of the tastings, we were getting it pulled straight from the cask! There was audience participation, which was so cool.

Justine even drank some of it! It’s not really her thing, but we both had to have the experience.

Sorry for the crappy photo - but we got to try the £1,900 scotch as our final “surprise” tasting. It was spectacular, as you could imagine.

Peat used in the process, along with the tools used to harvest it.

YOu’re going to get tired of long, white buildings across these next few posts…

We got to taste 6 different whiskies that day.

Cask Strength 12-year Old: We didn’t write down the details on this one. his is a pretty standard version of their whiskey, was poured from a bottle, and was a great start to the day.
Cask Strength 10-year Old from 2012 @ 52.1%. This was the first to come straight from the cask. It was out of a refilled hogshead (size of the cask).
Cask Strength 12-year Old from 2010 @ 57.3%. This one came from a re-charred red wine cask.
Cask Strength 16-year Old from 2017 @ 54.3%. This one came out of a refelled Butt (another type of cask) and was the last of the samples we would get that we’re drawn from the casks by the people on the tour.
18-year Old Bottle from 2005 @ 49%. What we learned was that the alcohol level is softened up a bit during the bottling process. They reduce it by adding water to the bottling.
26-year Old. This was the surprise of the day. Maybe they do it for every tour, but they certainly played it up like this was a one-off experience. But at £1,900 for the bottle, I was not going to be having any more, any time soon.

But the best part of the tasting was the person leading it. He’s been working for the distillery for 53 years and is set to retire in 8 weeks. He did such an amazing job of explaining the whole process, taking us through what we were tasting and answering all the questions that came up. And all with a certain Scottish flair that involve gently making fun of just about everyone. It really was an amazing experience.

One of the participants on the tour with the privilege of drawing the scotch from the cask, under the careful supervision of the boss.

After the tasting, we browsed the guest shop for a bit but did not buy anything. TheScotch was mostly crazy expensive, and with the limited amount you can bring back into Canada, I need to be selective. I was looking for some small sized bottles as gifts, and they did not have anything unique that you couldn’t by in Canada. They did have a very nice cycling jersey that I regret not having purchased; that and the 26 year old that we tasted, but it was £1,900 - almost $4,000!

We popped into the bar at Lagavulin just to have a look around. We would have liked to have stayed for a bit, but we did not have a lot of day left to hit the other two distilleries in the immediate area.

The main upstairs bar was pretty cozy.

The downstairs looked really nice, and I suspect they use it more for events.

One last look before heading on to Ardbeg.

After leaving Lagavulin, we headed up the road to Ardbeg. I’ve enjoyed their scotches over the years and we had been told that they had a really nice facility. That part ended up being true and we had a chance to walk around and take some pictures. I did feel a bit more “commercial” our touristy than Lagavulin, which surprised me.

I had not booked anything for this one, as I figured we were going to be hard pressed to align more than one tasting. Plus most of them were at roughly the same time, and much to my surprise many had been sold out when I checked months back. We figured that we’d be able to just pop inot tasting rooms, and generally it worked out.

They had a nice shop and beautiful tasting room, so I ordered a couple of their selections that you could only get at the distillery. We sat in their lovely bar and sampled them, before heading back out into the sunshine to explore the distillery a bit more.

As we were wandering about, we were able to go up to their still room, and the person working there was kind enough to let me poke me head in and look around. The stills are amazing - huge, gleaming works of art in cooper; monstrous things that each hold 23,000 liters, and they have 4 of them. It was something to see.

The huge stills - there were two more out of view, off to the right. Spectacular, and it was so nice of the guy to let me poke around while he was trying to work.

While Ardbeg was nice, it felt a bit commercial or gimmicky. It was fine, but it was missing something that Lagavulin brought. At this point I needed Justine to pick up the driving. So she had her first experience with the “other side of the road". She did great, and we headed off to Laphroaig.

The Ardbeg facility really is quite beautiful.

I had two quite nice samples in the tasting room.

By this point, I had had too much to be driving, so Justine got to have her first experience driving on the “wrong” side of the road! Not surprisingly, she did great; she’s just lucky we had an automatic.

One more big white building, and our last stop for the day.

Laphroaig was much closer to Lagavulin, and was the closest to town of the three. So it made sense for it to be our last stop on the back home at the end of the day.

This distillery has more history than Ardbeg and another amazing location, perched at the water’s edge. Once again, we didn’t have anything booked, but we were able to go into their tasting room and shop.

And they had a cool little museum that was worth looking around. Sadly, all of the distilleries have very short hours - 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and they close their bars down at 4:30!

So we were scrambling at this point in the day. I managed to get an order in for some samples, and we were able to sit in the bar after they stopped serving.

The entrance to the bar was very picturesque.

The location of the distillery was quite beautiful.

And we had some cool light, as it was getting towards the end of the day and there were big storm clouds gathering.

There was some cool stuff in their little museum.

At the front entrance.

I think the bar at Laphroaig was my favorite. It had a great atmosphere, big comfy leather chairs and a great vibe. And the scotches were amazing.

Justine went back outside to take some pictures while I enjoyed my drinks. Then we perused the shop and ended up buying a number of things to bring home with us.

Sadly, that was it for distilleries. There just are not enough hours in the in day! But we were not quite done with this part of the island. There was still a bit of daylight left, and some things to explore.

Instead, we headed back towards Lagavulin and parked in their car park. There are some old castle ruins along the coast, close to their distillery.

It’s called Dunyvaig Castle, and dates back to the 2th century, when a castle was built by Somerled, King of the Isles, on top of a fort or dun on a rocky promontory jutting into Lagavulin Bay. It had varying ownership until the castle was seized in 1647 by the Covenanters and passed into the hands of the Campbells of Cawdor, who held it until 1677, when Sir Hugh Campbell pulled down the castle and moved to Islay House. It’s hard to imagine why you would tear down a castle, but there are lots of ruins about.

A nice little panorama of the Lagavulin Distillery and surroundings.

Selfie time - it was still very windy!

I just can’t seem to stop taking pictures of the distilleries…

Hanging out at the castle ruins.

I may have been looking the wrong way. As you will see later, there are lots more photos to come.

Nick Gingrow so perfectly put it ‘It's a god damned castle abandoned on the coast of Islay with views of Lagavulin. What more could you want? A+” I have no idea who this dude is, but that quote made me laugh out loud when I saw it on Google.

There was an easy path that led down to it, and we spent some time enjoying a different view back to the Lagvulin site, taking more pictures. I’ve taken so many photos - it’s going to take forever to go through them all!

After enjoying the scenery, it was time to head back and call it a day. We had enjoyed a very busy one. Port Ellen is a pretty sleepy little town, and there are not a lot of food options. We started at the Port Ellen Hotel, but they were fully booked. The other main restaurant was closed on Mondays, so we were left with a Chinese take out place. So we made our order and waited for our food to be made.

A panoramic view of “downtown” Port Ellen, right on the water.

It’s a charming little town, with lots of small cottage row house.

Looking across the water to the row of colourful houses.

There certainly is a theme to the design and colour palette for the area. It makes it so charming.

This anchor was in a small park that we found as we were waiting on our dinner.

At the far side of town, you had a nice view back over the town.

It actually worked out really well - we took our order (they were very quick) back to our cottage, served it up and had a nice, relaxing night in, watching some shows on the iPad, having a beer from Fyne Ales with our really excellent take out. It was a fine, relaxing end to a very full and busy day.