November travels

Having recovered from another 2-3 day adverse reaction to my Covid/Flu jags (the 3rd time I've suffered), I was good to go last Monday - as was Jo - on only our second trip away from home this year. We'd done a one-nighter at Nairn a couple of weeks' beforehand, but this was a 3 night stay. We left Banchory on Monday morning and drove over to Oban, with a brief stop at Tesco, Dundee on the way, arriving early afternoon. The most immediate problem was parking - Oban is a nightmare, unless your hotel has its own car park, which ours didn't. Eventually, we plumped for paid on-street parking and headed off for a walk round the town. Up the hill to McCaig's Folly - it had to be done. As we climbed up, it started to rain a little, but we still had fine views of the town below:

The rain soon relented as we walked around the inside of the Tower (no longer a Folly, apparently), with fine views across the water to Mull:

On the way back down to the town, we walked along a street running parallel to a burn, where a local resident had made an effort to pretty it up a little:

Another near neighbour still had their Hallowe'en decorations up:

We had a couple of nice Fyne Ales in the Oban Inn then looked for somewhere to eat - not many choices on a Monday night in November, so we ended up just eating in one of the local chippies. On Tuesday morning after breakfast we had a few hours before our noon ferry departed. It was a beautiful morning and we took a drive around the area, taking in the scenery:

The ferry across was as smooth as you like and soon we were on the road from Craignure to Tobermory - the inspiration for Balamory:

After parking up at our hotel, we walked back down the hill to the front and had a spot of (late) lunch at McGochan's, after which we headed out on the trail north towards the lighthouse. At that stage, we weren't quite sure how far it was and with dusk approaching we thought we'd better play it safe and head back to the hotel where we checked in and settled in to our room, which had a beautiful view over the town and the water. The hotel had a large, very welcoming fire at reception with a beautiful sheepdog lying peacefully beside it - idyllic. Dinner later then we settled down for the night. Breakfast in the beautiful conservatory dining room watching the sun coming up was delightful:

The morning walk up the hill to the local Isle of Mull Cheese farm shop got our lungs working:

Then it was back down the hill to the chocolate shop for hot chocolate drinks before heading over to the Tobermory Distillery for our planned 11:30 am gin tasting session, which was good fun - just us and an Irish couple in the small room:

We thought it wise to walk off the alcohol and headed along the trail towards the waterfalls and Aros Park. The Upper Falls are particularly impressive:

It was a lovely day but 20,000 steps had finished Jo off, so dinner in the evening was very early and very light. Another lovely breakfast in an otherwise empty dining room as the sun came up preceded our departure on Thursday morning. We had decided to forgo the large Craignure-Oban ferry and take a different route home, which meant two smaller ferries, the first of which took us from Fishnish across to the mainland, and the second was the very short journey on the Corran ferry leading us towards Fort William:

Back home in Banchory we had plenty time to unpack, have tea and relax prior to joining Barry, Helen and Dawn in our regular weekly Zoom call, where we got a bit of a shock when we saw Barry and Helen:

(Apologies to all for the lack of warning that I was about to take this screen shot). Barry had just returned from hospital where he'd had further work done on the cancerous cell on his nose, but Helen was the worst off of the two, having fallen off her bike 10 days' previously and broken her elbow. She won't get the stitches and staples out until Thursday this week and is still on painkillers. We hope they both get better soon.