In which we have one last full Scottish breakfast, take one last walk, one last ferry ride, and head back to Glasgow where the temperature is quite appalling.

It’s another scorcher, way too bloody hot, and it’s going to get worse. 31C (88F) is predicted in Glasgow, and I later found out that it hit it. Hottest June temperature in well over a century. Awful.

We had an earlier start today, but not because of the ferry. I’d originally booked us on the 7:00am sailing, but we decided that a 5:30 am wake-up would be a terrible idea, so I was able to reschedule us for the 12:45 pm sailing. However, our hosts were on the 9:45 am sailing, heading up to Oban for a long weekend, so they’d asked us if we’d mind getting up a little early for breakfast. No bother. We ate another smashing full Scottish breakfast, loaded up the car with our relatively small amount of luggage and relatively huge amount of whisky, and headed out.

Mija had selected a lovely walk on the Oa penninsula, the bit that juts out the southwest of the south end of the island. We made a couple of wrong turns because the AI navigation was trying to send us to the center of the Oa instead of the start of the walk, but we made it in the end.

Our destination was a casual 1.5 mile coastal hill walk to the American Monument (more on that later). The whole area is a wildlife reserve, maintained by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which meant that there were basic markers all along the trail. This made finding the start of the train much easier, so we didn’t repeat our previous failure in that particular regard. It was hot, but being so close to the coast meant that there was a bit of a breeze that made it mostly tolerable. As did the wildlife. We passed highland cows, goats, sheep, and various birds. Sadly, no sign of the golden eagles that nest in the area, but they were probably trying to avoid the sun as well. We made it to the American Monument and sat there for a while, me enjoying the view, the ladies beating the crap out of pokemon in the area. Nothing like a shitty cartoon and modern technology to deface a century-old historic monument.

The American Monument is built on top of a cliff on the Oa penninsula, commemorating the loss of two American ships that sank nearby in 1918. The Tuscania, carrying around 2,000 American soldiers en route to the UK, was sunk by a German U-boat, possibly the same one that hid in the Glas Uig bay (see yesterday’s blog entry). The Otranto was another troop carrier that was involved in a collision in Machir Bay later that year, during a particularly bad storm. Between the two incidents, over 600 lives were lost which was devastating for a small island community. The monument resembles a stone lighthouse, and was erected by the American Red Cross, though there is also a commemorative plaque on the west side bearing the name of Woodrow Wilson.

The walk was beautiful, taking us along the cliff tops, then round past the working farm that works the reserve, and back to the car. I discovered that all the bumpy single-track and farm roads had been too much for one of the parking sensors in the rear bumper, which had retreated from its mount into the bumper. No way to re-affix it, so I’ll just have to live with the annoying, bright red warning light on the dashboard for now.

We made it back to Port Ellen with an hour to spare, so my ladies headed off to deface another monument. I mean pokemon gym. To be fair, it was already defaced, they just converted it to their colour. Or something.

Being so early, I got to watch the boat dock, and this time I got to see one of my favourite maneuvers. It’s like a combination handbrake and three-point turn. The boat has to dock with the stern to the quay, so she barrels in to the harbor, slides her back end around 90 degrees, then reverses in around the end of the quay into perfect position. Seriously, I’ve seen very few people who can park their SUVs that well, let alone a 5,000 ton boat.

I was looking forward to sailing on a new boat this time: the MV Hebridean Isles normally makes this sailing, but it turned out that the boats had switched around, and we were back on the Finlaggan again. Ah well, some other time. I think that it might have to do with vehicle capacity, because this was a busy boat and the Finlaggan has a neat little trick that I didn’t know about. She\ has an elevated vehicle deck, just half the width of the main deck, that they can raise and lower to increase capacity. Being in the second boarding lane, I was surprised to be guided on to this sloped, partial deck, which then rose to level about 12 feet up. Kooooowil!

We grabbed lunch on the boat, I spent some time on the deck snapping pictures of the distilleries as we sailed waaaay south of them (here’s hoping the zoom lens did it justice), then the wean crashed (she slept badly in the heat last night), while Mija knitted and I blogged.

Once we docked at Kennacraig, it was just a matter of joining the queue of ferry traffic as we headed inland. It’s a beautiful drive, marred only a little at the end by some horribly backed-up traffic around Loch Lomond side. I decided to take the back way to my folks’ place, avoiding the main roads through Dumbarton etc.,  and instead heading through Balloch and over in the direction of Dumgoyne and, of course, the Glengoyne distillery (we didn’t stop tonight). Honestly, I think that this route was just about as fast as the major roads I would normally have taken, and it’s far quieter and more picturesque. Also, fewer traffic lights. I may just use this route in the future.

We arrived at the folks place by about 6:00pm. We ordered some Chinese food for dinner, bought some iced cream as it seemed like the right weather for it, did some laundry, and again, all crashed. It is stinking hot in the house because houses just don’t have AC over here – who the hell needs AC in Scotland? – so the record temperatures are making it quite sticky indoors.

And with that pleasant image, good night!