MY FOURTH walking day in 2018 began with dull grey skies and the promise of drizzle all morning. Who can resist such tempting conditions as that? Clearly not me. Noël Coward once sang that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun but he never said anything about venturing out in an antemeridian downpour. Even the maddest of dogs would refuse to countenance such nonsense and so, like the Englishman I was, I would have to do this walk alone.
Tag: mull
CLXXXVI – Salen to Tobermory
GIVEN
the dismal downpour that had dominated day two of my first 2018 walking trip, I threw back the curtains on day three with some trepidation. The sky was grim and grey but the water appeared to be staying up there and not rushing to join me on the ground. I judged this a qualified success and hurried to the bus stop, keen to get started while that was still the case.
CLXXXV – Pennyghael to Salen
WHILE my first walking day of 2018 was blessed by blue skies and sunshine, the second saw neither of those things. The forecast had become one for unrelenting rain but, to be honest, that was okay because it was better than the sleet that it had previously predicted. Armed with a seemingly bottomless packed lunch courtesy of my B&B (Seaview in Fionnphort), I caught the bus back to rain-sodden Pennyghael and prepared to splish-splash the 23 miles to Salen.
CLXXXIV – Craignure to Pennyghael
AS THE winter nights shortened and the calendar crept towards the spring of 2018, I looked forward to resuming my perambulatory pastime. The warmer weather would also be more welcome except that it never arrived. Instead, a cold front — nicknamed the ‘Beast from the East’ — swept across Britain, burying rural areas under drifts of snow and even dusting London with the stuff.
CLXXXIII – Strontian to Craignure
IN KEEPING with my unintentional Christmas tradition of not writing up the last walk of the year until the festive season, it’s time I recounted the details of my walk from Strontian to Craignure. Not that I walked the entirety of that distance; Craignure is on the Isle of Mull (Muile), so a ferry crossing was involved.