Day 5: Oban to Iona - Baa baa black sheep

Probably my favorite day of the trip, long scenic mountains, black sheep, rocky wind swept islands, sunsets over the ocean, how does it get better than that?

Morning dawned and the rain seemed to have mostly passed. We had a quick look around Oban as we made our way to the ferry. The distance that seemed impassible last night from the grocery store seemed to be a bit of a joke now. On the ferry, we hopefully eyed the sunlight off in the distance, not exactly in the direction we were going but if it was there, maybe there was hope.

Once we started going in Craignure, it was raining slightly but it cleared up after a while. It was a long slow climb over the mountains. Most everybody got pretty spread out after a while. There was a lonely broken stone house near the top with a wooden cross. It looked so sad and ghostly. I rode by myself for quite a while. It is a strange feeling being in the middle of the mountains, nobody in sight, hoping that you are on the right road and going the right way. Sort of lonely and sort of nice at the same time. I watched the black and white stripped poles go by and every hillside looked like my favorite Section 25 album cover, you know the one with the hillside with the different colored bamboo poles scattered up the side of it spelling out From The Hip in a way that only would make sense to Factory Records.

Finally, a bit outside Pennyghael, CS and C. show up for a tea and oat cake break in a bus shelter, until the bakery van pulls up and starts conducting business out the back. Must have been selling dodgy cakes at a discount or something. We push onto Pennyghael and invade the solitary post office/store there, eleven teas please.

Onward to the port town of Fionnphort, we stop for ice cream and I take a quick run through the cemetery. The ferry is pulling up so we run to catch it. It isn't on a fixed schedule so we take it when it is ready to go. The other half of the group is still riding through Mull so once we get to the hostel, DA gets sent back to be the welcoming party. The island is only one and a half mile by three miles and there is a single road but it doesn't really say anywhere where the hostel is located.

The ride through town is nice, past the ruined nunnery, past the abbey, past lots of sheep, and to the sheep farm hostel. The island is where Christianity snuck into Britain and it has a bit of that feel still plus a new agey crystal power thing going on too. I think we disturbed some of the people in the common room, clomping in with our bike stuff as they were talking about religion and spirituality and proceeded to kind of take over the kitchen. But we left them alone for a while. The showers were fine and if riding 40 miles wasn't enough, it was time to explore the island. Why don't we climb a 100 meter peak?

Different groups went off in their own directions. I ended up with CS and C. on the back side of the island, wandering through the black sheep near the hostel (seemingly the only ones of that type on the island) and then the rest of the white ones. CS saw the white sand beach and made a beeline towards that, shoes off and I swear she was twirling. I find sand in shoes annoying so I stuck to the higher ground.

Circling around then, we headed up the peak, Dun I as it is labeled on the map. The climb was a bit of scrambling through rock fields and a lot of trying to pick your way through the least boggy parts. I tried avoiding as much as I could but the criteria for a not soggy step seems to diminish as your foot gets wetter and nothing good happens when you take a really wet step and panic and lose where you were had picked your next dry step to be.

The view from the top was spectacular and well worth the climb to the top. You could see the entire island and a lot of the ocean and surrounding islands. DT showed up just as it started raining lightly and we were wondering how to get down, well without going through the bogs again. He said he came up a different way and knew how. (Turns out he didn't know at all, but he seemed so confident about it.)

Dinner was started, a chili, baked potato and apple crumble spectacular. There is still a bit of dispute over the potatoes, who turned on the oven, why they were nice and cooked on top and a bit raw on the bottom and how the crumble got a bit burned in just a few minutes, but no matter, it all got cooked enough eventually and there were little to no remains left afterwards. The wine might have helped too.

The sun set in the meantime and we all ran outside to see it go down and hoping for a green flash. But it was too cloudy for a flash but it was still a pretty sunset. The sheep seemed confused by the whole thing and didn't seem very impressed by the sunset. But I guess they see the same one every night. They got their revenge though, every gust of wind during the night set them off so the night was punctuated by their baaing. Very good day though, 37.62 miles and a long hike and climb up a hill (totally different muscles, you know?)