Trip Report: Islay 2014, part 3 – Bruichladdich and Bowmore

Bruichladdich

 

A full Scottish will wake you up pretty quickly as you tuck in to bacon, sausage, eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, tomato, and maybe hash browns. This was the first one at the Lochside Hotel but definitely wouldn’t be the last. They’re delicious but not the most healthy option… I consoled myself with the thought of how sensible it was to fill up before the whisky made an appearance.

 

That wouldn’t be long in coming either, as the first thing on the agenda was a morning tour of Bruichladdich. When we arrived they needed a little extra time to get ready for us, so we headed for a quick unscheduled trip down to Portnahaven and Port Wemyss (pronounced “weems”) at the most westerly point of the island. It’s about a twenty minute drive from the gates of Bruichladdich so not too far, and well worth the trip.

 

The two villages are close together and postcard-perfect, with whitewashed houses and beautiful scenery. Two islets sit just offshore, one of which (Orsay) is home to the Rhinns of Islay lighthouse. We parked in Port Wemyss and watched the grey seals lounging around Orsay’s rocky shoreline for a while. The weather was still and the village seemingly empty at this time of day, and the barking of the seals from across the water could be heard clearly.
Read the rest of this entry »

Trip Report: Islay 2014, part 2 – Springbank and Islay arrival

Campbeltown

 

Monday dawned and it was straight down to breakfast nice and early at the Ardshiel, and then out to take some photos in the sunshine. Campbeltown is really lovely to look at, surrounded by natural beauty, and has some great history that sets it apart from a lot of similarly-attractive Scottish coastal settlements. Home to a whisky boom that at one time saw 34 operating distilleries in or near the town, those glory days are long since gone and the opulent mansions the whisky barons built for themselves are now variously homes, businesses, guesthouses, and churches.

 

Read the rest of this entry »

Trip Report: Islay 2014, part 1 – Arran

Port Ellen

 

There’s an old and rather quaint BBC documentary about Islay available on Youtube called Whisky Island. It’s an interesting record of an earlier age; you should go and find it if you haven’t yet had the pleasure. Filmed in the mid-1960s, when whisky tourism was all but unheard of, one of the most interesting aspects of the documentary is not so much the differences but the similarities between then and now. Fifty years on, Islay is still as unspoiled and remote as the one you see in the film, and the Ileachs debate the same topics – transport, jobs, the protection of an old way of life. Even though the whisky is the main draw for many of us, I think that this unhurried timelessness is one of the reasons many people come back year after year.

 

Read the rest of this entry »