Westcoast Rambling

Monday morning was cool and misty – a perfect day for a big Scottish breakfast, followed by a bit of Talisker whisky. So after leaving our hosts at the Phoenix B&B, we toddled off down the road for yet another distillery tour. Talisker does a very nice and informative tour, and even though we've now done 6 of them, we seem to pick up a bit more at each one. The sample of Talisker was very nice.....the second one even nicer – so we decided to get a bottle to bring home. By noon we were driving into the main town of Portree, and had located the laundromat. Between washer loads we managed to walk around town a bit, to get a feel for the town. We then had clean clothes again, and celebrated with a bit of lunch before hitting up the local archive centre to do some further research. They did have a few odd bits of information to help us out in our genealogical quest, but mostly things we'd already found, and couldn't locate the records we've been finding extremely elusive. So we headed down the street to our next B&B, overlooking the bay in Portree. We were feeling still satiated from our previous meals, so decided to skip dinner this evening, and just stayed in our room to read.

Tuesday was more of a Scottish west coast day, with rainshowers throughout the day. We had an appointment to meet a local genealogist, Norma McLeod, at 11 AM, so dawdled through breakfast and brushed up on our background for our McInnes family lines before setting out to meet her. She is very focused and efficient, and I believe she can help us investigate this line. She had done a bit of preparatory work and confirmed our research to present, in locating the correct family for our Martin McInnes. With her resources and local knowledge I am hoping she can continue to flesh out our McInnes and Beaton family lines. We then headed south again, to investigate the Clan Donald Castle and museum, which has a family resource centre as well. The castle and gardens and museum are just added benefits to our principal reason for visiting the family history resources. Again.....too many lost or missing documents to help much, although they did have some interesting census data for the Isle of Eigg, which could be relevant to our Campbell family research. It was late afternoon by the time we`d finished there, so headed back into Portree, to look for headstones in the old cemetery, which Norma had told us about. It was unlikely that any of our people could be located, but I had to look. We did find a few names which may tie in, but none that we know about. For a change of pace, we decided to do Indian food for a change, so had dinner at an Indian restaurant before retiring back to our B&B.

Wednesday was our day to head south again, off the Isle of Skye, across the bridge this time. A serious accident on the roadway kept us waiting for over an hour on the roadway, but we crossed back to the Kyle of Localsh by noon. We had a short look around the town before continuing along the coastal route southbound. We did a bit of an inland detour to drive along a bit of Loch Ness.....but no monsters could be seen.

We passed this castle on the coastal route....it was featured in the end of Monty Python's "Holy Grail" movie.

Then back to the coastal route, ending up in Oban, which is a seaside ferry town (ferries to several of the Hebridean Islands), built on a hillside. We explored the town a bit, but decided to look for accommodation a bit out of town, so backtracked a bit north to stay in a B&B in Connel, 5 miles north.

The town of Oban

Right alongside our accommodation is a bridge over the loch, with a tidal flow reminiscent of Skookumchuck Narrows, called the Falls of Lora (tidal ebb over a rock ledge creates a bit of whitewater and waterfall). We walked over the bridge, and found a nice little pub on the other side, where we tested some local ales and Oban whisky, which I discovered I like! So back across the bridge to the pub beside our B&B, where we had some dinner and tested a couple more ales and whisky. So now we are finishing off the envening with the last wifi for a few days. Tomorrow we will be heading inland to Stirling to look for Linda`s roots there, before returning to Glasgow to give back our rental car and heading to Belfast (N. Ireland). Until then..........