Fly Like An Eagle

This is my last Scotland post. Well, for 2022 anyway. 

It's been over two months since we returned from the north of Britain with a ton of memories. Ancient civilizations. Famous bridges. Caves. Mysterious stone circles. Whisky. Boats of every kind. Haggis. Battlefields. Castles. A complete lack of monsters in Loch Ness. Shipbuilding along the Clyde. David Livingstone's birthplace. Sculptures of giant horseheads. COVID. Cranachan. Gannets. Puffins. Maybe some other stuff here and there. And yes, I had to sneak the COVID in there.

Now it's time to close the posts on this trip and start thinking about the next one. So here goes the last Scotland post for this trip.

We love watching wildlife on our trips either here at home or when we travel abroad and for sure we got some amazing looks at two of the top seabirds in the world in day trips to see puffins and gannets in our time in Scotland. But our agenda had one more bird trip on it: a quest to see some eagles in the wild off the Isle of Mull. We've had some incredible sightings of bald eagles in Alaska and fish eagles in Africa in the past. Now it was time to add some white-tailed eagles to our list.

The first white-tailed eagle we spotted. And the only one on land.

I never really considered myself much of a birder. Earlier in life I would have opted for four legged creatures over those with wings any day of the week. But getting out and about on our planet has made me appreciate birds in ways I couldn't have imagined. The tipping point may have been our trip to Kenya and Tanzania in 2018, but certainly watching things with feathers in New Zealand a year later and in our very own backyard while working at home for a while during a global pandemic certainly fueled that fire a good deal. Now I'm kind of hooked.

We've taken all sorts of trips looking for birds. Some have been in cars, some have been on foot and some have been in boats. The boat trips have either taken us out to some remote island or just to the middle of nowhere to find some true pelagic birds. Our eagle trip in Scotland also got us on the water, but it operated a little differently than any other bird trip we've ever taken.

Our past boat-based bird trips have been searching typically for masses of birds. Our day trips to Lunga or Bass Rock on this very Scotland trip searching for puffins or gannets are good examples of that sort of trip. On those two occasions, we headed for some nesting colonies, knowing the birds wouldn't be flying far from home with chicks needing to be taken care of.

We also attracted a good number of albatrosses on a boat ride out of Stewart Island on the very tip of New Zealand. Not nesting, but there in pretty large numbers and all after the chum that our boat was dumping into the ocean, evoking fishing boats discarding the unwanted (to humans) parts of fish that the mollymawks gladly gobbled down about as soon as the bits hit the water.

Our quest for eagles was different. Here we were on the water trying to get birds to come from the land to the boat. And not a lot of birds. Eagles are apex predators and those sorts of birds don't congregate together. Instead, they stay in pairs and occupy a lot of territory. No mass sightings here. Our looks would be very, very targeted. And possibly pretty isolated. We'd need to savor every chance we got.

White-tailed eagles on approach from afar and nearer.

So here's the drill with eagle-spotting off the Isle of Mull: sail on a boat northwards between the Isles of Mull and Ulva and tempt eagles out towards you and see what happens. Sailing, here, of course, does not mean unfurling sails and using wind power. It's all about the motor.

How do you tempt an eagle to pay you a visit out on the water in a boat? Well, with food, of course. What else? And because we'd done something similar off the coast of New Zealand with albatrosses, I figured our experience would be much like that. We'd dump a bunch of fish parts into the water and have some eagles come down and sit on the water around the boat and feed. 

It wasn't like that. It was completely different.

Our afternoon west of Mull started slowly. We spotted a white-tailed eagle on land and then one in the air on sort of a fly-by along the coast. Clearly not interested in our boat or anything else really out on the water. We didn't drop fish into the water. This was confusing. Wasn't this what we were supposed to do to attract these birds?

The first eagle on the wing that we saw. I know these birds all look pasted into a bird-less pic but that's not the case.

The first eagle we saw up close on our trip started from a long way away and yet it was obviously coming for us. It didn't cruise by the boat randomly or glide closely on some other errand to see what was going on. It made a beeline from its nest over a lot of water straight for our boat. It was purposeful and very, very deliberate and there was no fish in the water even. But it seemed to know what was coming. Whether it had been conditioned to associate our particular boat with food or whether this is a natural behavior, I can't say. But every eagle we saw up close that day did this exact same thing.

When it got close enough for us to see it clearly, our crew tossed a single fish in the water, which bobbed along the surface to be picked up. From here, the scene was intense. The eagle stopped flying and started floating, or so it seemed. No more flapping, just wings spread out intently, with every feather stretched out as far as it could be to support the bird hovering as much as possible. We could see the claws clutching and the eyes focused intently. And those gulls that had been trailing our boat for a while? No interest in that fish. Not with that eagle around. The power of that bird was palpable.

There's some irony here. Eagles, for all their apex-predator-ness, are not fishing birds. They are not ospreys or puffins or gannets or even gulls. They do not do well diving into or onto the water. In fact, they just don't do it at all. On the water, they are scavengers. Understanding this fact was a significant downgrade of my understanding of an eagle's hunting capability. Not that it made the look up close any less spectacular.

We got maybe four or five close fly-bys in our few hours on the water. That's not a lot. It's minutes. There was a ton of down time where we waited and watched nothing and waited some more. Sure, we saw some shags and some other birds out on the waves but nothing really super exciting. Until an eagle returned. We booked this trip because we wanted to see some eagles and see some we did. We got what we paid for.

We boarded knowing that we might see golden eagles or white-tailed eagles. We ended up with just the white-tailed, which based on its wingspan is one of the largest eagles in the world. It was amazing to see a bird like this up close the way this tour offered. I would have liked more approaches but I'm not really sure how I get another chance to do this kind of thing again. Definitely an afternoon well spent.

When I wrote about our trip to see gannets on Bass Rock near Edinburgh, I lamented my skill, or lack thereof, in shooting pictures of birds in flight. I feel the same way about my prowess photographing eagles as I do about gannets. I need more practice. But I almost got the perfect shot; my camera just moved down a bit at the critical moment. Maybe it was the water but it was most likely me. What I ended up with, though, is my favorite eagle picture of the trip (it's below). The water looks a little savage and the coloring is a bit dark (darker than I remembered or the other pictures I took show) but the bird is in perfect profile while departing the surface of the sea with a fish that our boat had tossed out for it just minutes before. I love this picture.

There is one other thing that this trip did for me: it emphasized the otherworldly beauty of the Isle of Mull. Of all the places we visited in Scotland over our two weeks, Mull was my favorite. We spent a total of just three nights there and in our time I think we covered about most of the island. Or at least most of the one-lane, two-way roads on the island, anyway.

From the time we sailed past the island on the CalMac Ferry; to driving along the shoreline to the multicolored village of Tobermory; to time out on the water looking for puffins and eagles; to walking to the lighthouse north of Tobermory; and everything in between. Mull was it. Eagles made Mull better but the ride home from the water gave us the most gorgeous views of the hills with beautiful blue sky and the fluffiest clouds projecting the softest shadows over the land.

I know that description sounds incredibly corny but it's completely true. The last picture I'm posting from this trip is an incredibly ordinary and amazing at the same time view from a boat ride back to the dock. Check out that landscape. I debated which picture I wanted to post of that return journey. Ultimately, I couldn't decide and elected to post two. Neither of these photos is the best I took on this trip, nor anywhere close to the best I've ever taken. But I love them more than most.

I'm hoping where we go next is as gorgeous as Mull.

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How We Did It

There are a number of eagle-watching activities on the Isle of Mull. We looked into a few of options before settling on Mull Charters. The tour we took was a 12 person tour but they do offer smaller excursions which are understandably slightly more pricey for photography enthusiasts. I'm perfectly happy with the decision we made. We got some amazing looks and learned something really in depth about a new bird we hadn't seen in the wild before. 

We made our reservation with Mull Charters via phone (I don't think there is any other way...) and we had to call the day before to confirm the departure time in the event of weather but it worked. The boat leaves from the dock next to the Ulva Ferry on Mull. Other than the sign for Mull Charters, there is really nothing to let you know that you are in the right place. Stay calm and wait. They will show up on time. I'm generally not too good with those types of situations but it worked out just fine, as these situations always tend to do. I'd highly recommend spending a couple of hours with Martin on the boat. We loved it.

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Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict

There is a town in Scotland, about two thirds of the way between Aberdeen and Dundee, named Aberlemno. In many respects to the casual passerby or passer through (that would be me, in this case), Aberlemno is no different than many other Scottish towns and villages out there. There are fields used for farming as far as the eye can see. The roads are seemingly all too narrow and are edged with earthen berms topped by low stone walls. Maybe there are some sheep here and there. And there is an astonishing lack of actual buildings around for people to live in, although there always seems to be a parish church of some type somewhere around.

We drove through Aberlemno on a Tuesday afternoon in June. Our passing through there was no accident. In fact, it was quite deliberate. Because, really, as much as Aberlemno might resemble a lot of other Scottish towns, in one respect it is actually quite remarkably different: if you drive to the right spots in Aberlemno, you will find some carved stones standing by the side of a road or in a churchyard which have been there for more than 1,200 years. That, to us, seemed like a good reason to visit on a Tuesday afternoon, especially since we happened to be traveling from Aberdeen to Edinburgh (and past Dundee) on that very same day anyway.

The four stones in Aberlemno that we made our way deliberately to visit were carved by a group of people called the Picts between (and I guess this is estimated) 500 and 800 C.E. They weren't the only stones carved by these people found there. There were at least two others, one of which was lost (I don't know how you lose a piece of stone taller than a person...) and one of which was relocated to a museum in Dundee. They are still looking for others.

Our planned stop in Aberlemno made me wonder...who were the Picts and what else is out there in Scotland that might have been left behind by these people? Turns out there's actually quite a bit of mystery surrounding the Picts. And they sure did leave a lot of stuff behind.

Detail, top back side of the Roadside Cross, Aberlemno.

If you had asked me before our trip to Scotland this year to sum up the last say couple of thousand years in that corner of the planet, I'm not really sure how good a job I could have done. I could probably have spit out something about Hadrian's Wall in the second century C.E. and probably could have thrown out names like Robert the Bruce and William Wallace before boldly claiming that Scottish resistance to English rule was brutally squashed at the Battle of Culloden. Beyond that? Railways and bridges and ships, maybe? Industrial revolution and all that stuff?

But the details and the timing of all that? Maybe not so clear. I might not even have been close to within a hundred years or so.

Now if you had really pushed me for some more details on this history stuff, I might have used words like Picts and paganism and Celts and Gaels and I might have intertwined and interrelated all these concepts. But honestly, I just wouldn't have had the faintest real clue. So faced with a town like Aberlemno where there was a real opportunity to fill in some giant gaps in my understanding of Scottish history...well, I was all in! I needed to know about these Picts. And I guess the Gaels and Celts too if they happened to be in the story.

Maclean's Cross, Iona.

So first of all, the Picts were not what they called themselves. Apparently, the name was what the Romans called the people living in the north of what is now Britain. You know, the part of the island that Rome could claim they conquered but then couldn't hold on to. The Picts (or whoever they really were) weren't much help here with their own name or names. They had a tendency to not write stuff down so whatever they were called as well as what they did or built and how they lived is all pretty much lost to history.

And there were Celts and Gaels in the mix here who may or may not have been the same people as the Picts. The Celts were a peoples who were living in the British Isles before anyone who kept any sort of history at all was around that part of the world. The Celts were just there in Britain at some point when other groups (like the Romans and the Vikings and the Normans) started showing up and trying to take over. The Gaels were from Ireland, but they definitely had a presence in Scotland, particularly on the west coast near...well...Ireland. Big surprise there. So yes...Picts, Celts and Gaels...all in Scotland at some point. But let's stick with the Picts for this post.

For some reason, and I know it's my own personal cultural bias in operation here, I assumed that the Picts north of The Wall (of Hadrian) were all pagans. Which is totally true. Long ago, before history was written down in northern Britain, the people living there worshipped nature and maybe gods long forgotten. There were certainly offerings and sacrifices (not saying human, necessarily) for things like good harvests, and they built rings of stones and other temple-like places to seemingly relate to things like the solstices.

At some point, paganism started to fade and Christianity made its way to the Picts. Not likely through written books translated into English or Olde English or any other sort of written language. Likely there were monks or missionaries or priests or saints (or whatever) that started to reach the people in the north and talk about Christ and the gospels and all that. Eventually, stuff began to stick.

Two of the stones at Aberlemno. The Serpent Stone (top) and the Roadside Cross (bottom).

In Aberlemno, you can see hints of all of this transition between religions and much more.

As you drive into town, there are a series of three large stones on the left hand side of the road, carved to various degrees of precision and detail. Two of the stones (known today as the Serpent Stone and the Crescent Stone) depict symbols from nature, one clearly marked at the top with a depiction of a snake and the other less clearly carved with some faint crescent shapes. Maybe the moon. Although the plaque next to the Crescent Stone does not make that speculation.

The third stone, and the most massive of the three, is an intricately carved cross with angels flanking either side of the shaft of the cross on the front of the stone. On the rear face of the stone, there are representations of a hunting scene along with a centaur gathering medicinal herbs and David saving his flock of sheep from a lion. At the top of the back side of the stone, there is the same crescent shape (shown above) found on the Crescent Stone and some Pictish symbols, similar to those found on the Serpent Stone.

If there's any evidence needed that the Picts were both pagan and Christian, to me it shows up clearly in these three stones. Two of the three are devoid of any reference to Christianity; the third is a clear mixture of the two. For me, though, the fact that these stones show a transition from paganism to Christianity isn't the point here. I mean it's cool as an indication of history, I guess, but that's not what I got out of our visit to Aberlemno.

The real beauty in these things for me is the fact that they have lasted more than 1,200 years and that they are carved so intricately by a peoples who must still have been using most of their waking hours just to stay alive. I can't imagine what the people who made these things would have thought if they knew someone in the 21st century from an ocean away was driving by in a rented Honda Jazz to look at what they carved. It staggers my imagination.

The Crescent Stone. The carvings are barely visible but it is like 1,500 years old or something.

If I was impressed by the three stones by the side of the road (and I was), I still had one more to see at the Aberlemno Parish Church in the middle of the graveyard. It was placed there after the church was built, rather than the church being built where the stone stood.

The churchyard stone is the most interesting of the four stones we saw in the town, not only due to the artistry and the intricacy of the carving but also for the historical document that it is. There is a large cross on one side of the stone which is carved in what I can only articulate as a Celtic design. The cross itself is filled in with patterning that looks sort of rope-like, much like the jewelry we saw in souvenir shops in Ireland almost three years ago. Animal figures fill in the space between the cross and the edge of the stone.

The other side depicts a battle scene, what historians believe might be the Battle of Dún Nechtain in the year 685, a battle waged between the Picts and the invading Northumbrians led by King Ecgfrith. The Picts, as carvers of the stone, clearly won. This scene represents not just a work of art but a story told by people who are no longer around to be able to relay their history. I know I just poo-pooed the historical nature of the other three stones but this one is way cooler. This shows an actual event, not just a change in religious representation or focus. I'm sure the battle was way more chaotic than the stone represents, by the way. And I'm sure King Ecgfrith didn't succumb to the raven attacking him in quite the way the stone shows.

The Churchyard Cross, front side and back side, Aberlemno.

Aberlemno was actually the last place on this trip that we visited to see stones that were carved by the Picts. In terms of quantity and variety, it was clearly the best. There was no other site we visited that had more than one. But we did see others that were perhaps better quality.

Aberlemno was the last Pictish stones site that we added to our itinerary. The first places I planned on this trip were the Hebridean islands of Islay, Mull and Lewis and as it turned out there are ancient Pictish stones on the Isle of Islay and on Iona just off the west coast of Mull. We actually started building our Pictish stones journey from those places and couldn't resist the quick detour off the Aberdeen to Edinburgh path once we found out about Aberlemno. Visiting a single stone doesn't tell the same sort of story as visiting four in one site, but I think there was still a lot of value in chasing these things down.

Perhaps the most famous and most important of the carvings we found was Maclean's Cross on the Island of Iona. Maclean's Cross was produced way, way later than the stones we found at Aberlemno. It was placed on Iona around the year 1500 as a marker for pilgrims on their way to Iona Abbey, one of the most important early centers of Christianity in Scotland. The cross is enormous and covered with carvings of patterns around a central picture of the crucifixion of Christ. Unlike the stones in Aberlemno, it's actually cross shaped. As a work of art, it's impressive, particularly in its size and detail. It's also probably most famous for being where it is as much as for what it is. Among its many claims to fame, Iona Abbey may have been the place where the Book of Kells, now prominently on display in Dublin's Trinity College, was written before it was moved to save it from potential raids by the Vikings.

The back side of Maclean's Cross, Iona.

I can't say if someone who knows way more about this subject has ever produced any sort of list of the best Pictish carved stones in Scotland or anything like that. If there is, I'm not sure what we saw at Aberlemno or Iona would make the list. Impressive? Sure. Even the fact that these things are still around today is impressive. But I'd have to think the first stone we looked for and found might stand a chance of making such a list. That stone would be the Kildalton Cross on the Isle of Islay.

I don't know what it is about the Kildalton Cross exactly that makes it so impressive, unless I just say it was everything about the Cross that blew me away. Of all the carvings we found on our trip, this was clearly the most complex and most well executed. Its form is a ring-headed or Celtic cross, a crucifix with a circle superimposed at the crossing of the two arms. It's massive and it's intact, which is super-impressive considering it dates from about the year 700, older by far than Maclean's Cross and perhaps even older than some of those at Aberlemno.

The decoration on the Cross is detailed with patterning and biblical scenes and the decoration is not only carved into the plane of the cross but also "attached" to the front of the cross. I guess "attached" is the right word, although maybe not if the Cross was carved from a single stone. It is a true work of art. It's also in the same spot it was originally erected in the courtyard of the former parish church of Kildalton. It's incredible that it's even in this spot still standing. The things this cross must have seen over the last 1200 or 1300 years...

Kildalton Cross, Islay.

There were two other factors working in favor of Kildalton Cross being the most impressive we saw in Scotland. First, the weather was perfect. The sun shining on the front side of the cross made every carved piece of the stone pop to life. I know it's superficial to credit sunlight as making a carving more memorable but it was absolutely true. We had great weather much of the time we were in Scotland but not at the exact times we were on Iona or in Aberlemno. The sun helped Kildalton Cross immensely.

Finally, Kildalton Cross is frustratingly challenging to get to. It's located past the three southern coast of Islay distilleries after the two lane paved road becomes a two-way, one lane road which is definitely a bit more overgrown and not-cleared than a lot of the other two-way, one lane roads we traveled down in Scotland. And there's actual traffic coming the other way and not exactly plentiful passing places. Make it all the way to the old parish church and your reward is the finest piece of Pictish carving we found in our limited search in Scotland. The journey definitely makes the payoff better.

The magnificent front of Kildalton Cross in full sunlight.

Our pilgrimage to find ancient Pictish carvings in Scotland was really a result of finding out that these sorts of works were in places where we were going anyway. We went to Islay to learn about whisky; we went to Mull to see wildlife; and we had to travel past Aberlemno on the way from one place we really wanted to go (Dunnottar Castle south of Aberdeen) to the final stop on our Scotland trip (Edinburgh). We thought taking a quick detour on Islay and Mull before hitting Aberlemno would string together some similar sights that would get us a little bit of exposure to a bit of history made by peoples whose history is mostly long forgotten. Or maybe it's preserved in what we saw and many other similar carvings that we didn't see.

In many ways, it would have been a better experience if we had made the trip in reverse and ended up on Islay last. It would, I think, have made Kildalton Cross that much more impressive. But that's not how we planned this trip and I have no regrets about doing it the way we did it. If I ever get back to Islay, I will have to go back to the old Kildalton Parish Church. Not holding my breath there. For now, I'll stick with the memory of 2022. 

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How We Did It

Of all the carved stones we found in Scotland, Aberlemno is probably the easiest to get to, if for no other reason that it's on mainland Britain. We just plugged in Aberlemno into our navigation app and after taking many lefts and rights on the (barely) two lane road to the town, we drove past three stones on the left hand side of the road. There's a parking lot just beyond the stones that has some informational signage and replica stone depicting the battle scene of the Churchyard Cross. Park the car, cross the road (remember traffic is on the left) and walk down to see the Roadside Cross, Crescent Stone and Serpent Stone. If you want to see these stones, better come when it's not winter; apparently they cover them in winter to protect the stones from the elements.

The parish church can be found by traveling a bit further north up the same road and taking a left toward the church. We didn't find any sort of parking at the church but just pulled over and accessed the courtyard. I'm not sure we parked legally but there was literally nobody in sight. No harm, no foul here.

Getting to Kildalton Cross and Maclean's Cross is a bit more involved because it will involve at least one boat and a combination of two more boats or planes. To get to Kildalton Cross, drive east from Port Ellen past Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg distilleries and follow the signs to the Cross. There's also a walking trail on the south side of the road but it's a long walk all the way to the Cross.

We found Maclean's Cross by being dropped off at the ferry landing on Iona and walking straight up the hill and hanging a right after passing the ruins of the old nunnery. It's not much of a walk to the Cross and you can't realistically walk past it without missing it.

My understanding of the history of the Picts and the Gaels and the Celts and when they worshipped nature vs. Christ wasn't helped much by any of our visits to these sites. I managed to find a book called A Pocket History of Scotland at the Battle of Bannockburn Experience near Stirling which told me pretty much all I needed to know about Scottish history in an easy to read format. It cost me all of £5.99 and it's been worth its weight in gold. I can't remember buying a book this small for this low a price that has helped me so much, although I'll dispute the "pocket" label just a bit. Not saying I don't have pockets I can fit this book into, but I certainly have a lot of pockets that it won't fit into.

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Don't Pay The Ferryman

Our trip to Scotland in late June and early July of this year lasted almost exactly two weeks. I mean that quite literally. We spent 14 days there almost to the hour from the time we crossed the Scottish border heading north to Glasgow to crossing the same line heading back south to England. That's about 336 hours of time, if you are inclined to do the math. Clearly, I was.

Of those 336 hours north of the border, we spent an awful lot of time on boats. Like an astonishing amount of time. We sailed (sailing here means a boat with a motor; there were no actual sails involved on this trip) on small boats with about 10 other people to massive boats seemingly capable of spending long hours at sea in all sorts of weather. We left the shore in search of puffins, gannets and other sorts of birds; floated past world famous whisky distilleries right on the shoreline; and roamed around the largest loch in Scotland (and largest body of water by far in Britain) in search of monsters that never bothered to have the common courtesy to surface right next to our vessel and make us internationally famous.

But of all the boats we set foot on during this trip, we spent by far the most amount of time on ferries moving us back and forth between the mainland of Scotland and the Hebrides, the string of islands on the west coast of the country. By my count, we spent about 16 hours either on these ferries or waiting to get on these ferries. And they were worth pretty much every minute of it, and not just because we needed them to take us and our trusty Honda Jazz to some amazing places. 

So I'm thinking the ferries deserve a post, right? I mean almost 5% of our total trip was spent on these things. I wrote a post about gannets and our looks at those birds lasted less than an hour. And to be completely frank, we probably spent more than 16 hours with the wait times. We are always early, after all.

Early morning sail from Islay to the mainland (top); and leaving Ullapool en route to Lewis (bottom).

So honestly, if we really wanted to go to the islands of Islay, Mull and Lewis (and we did), we pretty much had to take ferries to get around. Sure, we could have flown to each island, leaving our car at whatever airport on the mainland we flew from and picking up some sort of transport on the islands, but that seemed way more complicated. The ferries (all of which were operated by Caledonian MacBrayne, or CalMac for short) were an essential part of our trip that ultimately probably crossed that line from necessary commodity to beloved travel partner by the end of our time in the Hebrides.

Maybe "beloved" is a bit of stretch but there was for sure a special kind of kinship with the CalMac ferries that we picked up during our first week in country. Part of that love (or whatever it is) is the romance associated with certain types of travel. Most of our time getting away is probably spent in planes and cars, two decidedly non-romantic types of travel, unless we are talking about a seaplane or something like that (like the one that took us to Dry Tortugas National Park in 2014). But if we start talking about moving from place to place on a boat or a train, now we are talking about a mode of travel that definitely makes me happier and more relaxed. 

There is something about being on a boat on the open water (and to clarify, we are talking calm water here) that is relaxing and peaceful. Just the ocean or sea as far as you can see with specks of land in the distance marking your departure point and destination or just an island or shore that you are passing by. It's slow. It's serene. It's exhilarating being out on deck watching it all. It's amazing.

I know...it's not a sailboat. It's a ferry. It has a pace to it that's plodding and unexciting on the surface. And those big engines are working hard and probably using all too much energy to get us from port to port. 

But there is a throwback quality to ferries that appeals to me. They are not fancy but they are the ultimate short and mid-distance people movers on the water that have been around for a long, long time. It's even better if you get to drive your car on and off them (which we did on six of the seven CalMac ferries we rode). There's something cool about putting your entire vehicle onto a boat and just driving it off on the other side. For all the places I've ever been, I'm not sure I've ever driven a car onto a ferry. That sounds crazy but I think it's true. Although, not any more.

About that driving onto the boat, though. You definitely need to pay attention when you are doing it. Most of the ferries we took had a single level of parking for cars; getting on and off those was pretty straightforward. The ferry between Ullapool and Stornoway (on the Isle of Lewis), though, had a second level of parking in its hold on each side of the boat towards the exterior. The second deck was accessed by a ramp on each end that was raised after it was full and then lowered to allow disembarkation. 

We were unlucky enough to park on the upper deck both ways on that trip. I say unlucky here because they let the upper decks off last; it's kind of difficult to lower the ramps to the upper decks when there are cars below. But we were not as unlucky as one person next to us who managed to drive their front wheel off the side of the ramp down from the upper deck. I don't know how long that mess took to get sorted out because we got off as soon as we could. Just watch where you are driving when getting on and off ferries is the message here.

The ferry to Islay opening up their vehicle "door" (top); and driving on at Ullapool (bottom).

One of the great things about boat travel is there is generally enough room to move around some (or a lot) and there's usually some stuff to do. Exploring a boat this size can take some time and we are not talking about open ocean travel here so there's typically something to look at while you are going wherever the boat is taking you. Plus, if you need a meal, there's a full galley. None of this is like a plane or train where you are confined to a relatively small space for the duration of your journey. More room is better.

We did manage to see some pretty amazing things looking overboard, from a very fleeting look at some dolphins (or maybe they were porpoises); to lots of birdlife, like gannets plunging into the water in search of food; to seaside distilleries on Islay; to a few ruins or a lighthouse or two or maybe even a castle. There are some great views of Duart Castle on Mull from the CalMac from Oban to Craignure. Duart is not a medieval castle; it was re-built in the early 20th century. But you still get a great view from the water. People pay for tours to see these sights. You get it all on the ferry for free.

And that food? Pretty good. At least for breakfast. We actually ate breakfast twice on the ferries. I'd highly recommend the bacon and tomato breakfast sandwich. I'll also say that we got the sense that the staff working in the galley really cared. If your order wasn't ready at the counter then someone would find you in the dining room and bring it. I got the sense that the job is not viewed as a stepping stone to something else. We saw when we got back home that the BBC is making a reality series about life working on the CalMac ferries. HAVE to find a way to watch that when it gets released next year.

Oh, there's also a full bar on board in case you need a dram of whisky. Just not at breakfast time. Islay is well represented, appropriately enough.

Waiting for breakfast (top) and I'm counting six types of Islay whisky at the bar (bottom).

As I've already said, we pretty much had to take these ferries to get where we were going but there is actually a benefit to getting to some of the departure points. These places could be seen as a necessity to get where we really wanted to go on the other side of the water, but we used the opportunity to explore a bit and appreciate the drives that it took to get there, wherever there happened to be.

We left for Mull from Oban, which is a bustling ferry hub. There are boats coming in and out of there all day so it would stand to reason that there would be something going on. Our destination here was lunch, which turned out to be a bite to eat at the sketchily named Oban Seafood Hut, a green painted stall right on the water. The shrimp sandwich was great but I'd steer clear of the rubbery whelks. It's the animal, not the place of business. Who likes whelks? I can't imagine.

Our other two points of departure (Kennacraig and Ullapool) took us by some of the best scenery we drove past on this trip. The road to Kennacraig took us past the shoreline of the west coast of Scotland. The road to Ullapool took us through the highlands. Both were amazing drives and the best part was they were just a bonus. We weren't there to drive through spectacular scenery at all; they were just throw ins for free on a drive of necessity. 

Ullapool, where we departed to Lewis from, is a gorgeous little town of rowhouses lined up facing the harbor. I can't imagine what people in Ullapool do for work because it seemed to be utterly remote, but the place is really well put together. I suppose the ferry brings a lot of business to the town. We ate at the local chippy here before we boarded and found a couple of Scottish fish and chip shop delicacies that we had no concept of what they might actually be. We stuck to the fish but looked up the king rib and the red pudding later. Glad we got the fish.

Scenes from the ferries: Port Ellen, the islands on the way to Stornoway, and Duart Castle.

The longest ferry we took on this trip was between Ullapool and Stornoway which was two and half hours (or maybe just a bit longer on the way there) each way. The shortest we took was from Iona to Fionnphort on Mull which was all of 15 minutes long. The ferry from Iona was mercifully short but the ferry to Stornoway was probably the best ride we took, despite the length. The weather was perfectly sunny on that 7 p.m. trip and the islands we motored past were just so picturesque. It was almost worth the price of admission for that view alone.

Speaking of admission and despite the title of this post (I have to search for song titles, right?) we did pay the ferryman here. And before we got to the other side. These things are not cheap, particularly with a vehicle to pay for. We were whale watching (or more accurately staring at the water) in the morning on Lewis talking to a dude from Salisbury, England and complaining about the cost of the ferries. He summed it up well (and I'm paraphrasing here): the cost of taking a car on the ferries is not cheap, but if you want to get to what's on the other side, you just have to pay for it. He was right. The CalMacs got us to some incredible places. I can't imagine doing it any other way.

The menu at Deli-Ca-Sea Fish and Chip Bar, Ullapool. Red pudding anyone?

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How We Did It

The Caledonian MacBrayne ferries run all throughout the islands off Scotland's west coast, from Arran in the south to Lewis in the north. There are about 30 different routes in total and they operate at different times on different days of the week. Their schedules also vary by season. We were in Scotland right near the summer solstice so I assume the ferries were running much more frequently that time of year than during the winter months. Check their website for their most current schedules.

You will likely find that most routes require passenger arrival in advance of departure time, typically 30 to 45 minutes ahead of the actual departure. We were told by the hotel owner in Stornoway that we should not be late on these arrival times or else we'd risk being left behind. We planned on being early anyway (we are always early) but there were signs at some ferry terminals listing what happened to late cars. If I'm remembering right it was that you get put to the back of the line, but I suppose risk of being left behind might be real in some situations.

I like to think that I make travel reservations far in advance but I honestly almost got caught with no ferry reservation to Lewis. I bought ferry tickets on April 4 for that trip on June 25 and two of the three ferries to Stornoway that date and one the next day back to Ullapool were sold out. Fortunately, neither of the ferries we wanted to take were booked solid. Just don't count on last minute availability.

And not kidding about the breakfast. Or the BBC series. The food is good and I can't wait for that series to be released.

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Bass Rock

Our trip to Scotland this summer took us from a starting point in Glasgow; up through the Hebrides Islands on the west coast of the country; down through Inverness and past Aberdeen; before ending up at the terminus of our trip in the capital of Edinburgh. It took us by lochs and glens; past mountains (such as they have in Britain...); over seas and straits; and through fields and fields of sheep. Sometimes literally through fields of sheep. There was actual waiting in some spots for sheep to move off the road.

By the end of all that traveling, we were ready to settle a bit. We spent more nights in Edinburgh than we did in any other city. We wanted to root ourselves a bit after bopping between five prior hotels in various other towns and cities, but we also wanted to take advantage of Edinburgh's proximity to sights around the city by day tripping out of town for a couple of days. Including our last opportunity for a truly excellent and intimate look at some of the seabirds that nest in the summer months of the coast of Scotland before they head out to sea for most of the year.

When we were on the west coast of the country, we spent a couple of hours on the Isle of Lunga getting up close and personal with a whole lot of puffins. On the Edinburgh side of Scotland, our target was Bass Rock, home to a whole lot of nesting gannets. We've seen quite a few species of seabirds on our travels over the last nine years or so but we hadn't managed to get up close and personal with some gannets until Scotland. We couldn't let this opportunity pass.

The point of departure for our trip to Bass Rock was the town of North Berwick, specifically the dock next to the Scottish Seabird Centre right on the shoreline of the town. The day we tripped to North Berwick was rainy and cold, so we figured there would be little chance of us actually going out to sea. After the 45 minute or so ride from Edinburgh, I was ready for some disappointment. But we were pleasantly surprised to find the trip still a go despite the lousy weather. In fact, the staff at the Centre seemed a bit shocked that I would even ask the question. Good thing. We didn't want to have driven all that way only to turn around, and the weather when we actually got on the water turned out to be just fine.

Bass Rock, by the way, is just that. It's a very, very large rock in the middle of the Firth of Forth (or the mouth of the Forth River). Despite being a giant rock, it has, over the years, been inhabited by a number of different types of people. The first recorded inhabitants were early Christian hermits, and there's nothing like getting away from it all to live on a rock. I mean, how did they even survive out there without a reliable source of fresh water? I guess from reading wikipedia's entry on the Rock, it wasn't always as barren as it is today. Probably the guano is making it that way these days.

Eventually, the Rock fell into the hands of the Lauder family who ended up holding the it for several hundred years before losing it to Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s. The Lauders certainly made their mark on the place by building a castle there, the ruins of which are still visible today. After the Lauders built their castle, the island was used as a couple of different kinds of prisons or jails (or gaols, if you prefer), until it made its way into the hands of the Dalrymple family in 1707 who still hold it to this day. The lighthouse on the island (visible in the picture above) was added in the early 20th century. 

Today, all of that is all abandoned and the entirety of the island is used as a nesting colony by some 150,000 northern gannets. Not a typo. One hundred and fifty thousand.

So about those gannets.

The northern gannet, much like those beloved puffins that we found earlier on in this same trip, are predominantly a seabird, which means they spend most (like 9-10 months) of the year at sea feeding and ultimately sort of homeless. But in the summer, gannets return to their traditional breeding grounds and raise a chick for a couple of months. And by a chick, I really do mean just one. One single chick per pair. And the pair is generally the same every year. 

Now, if you think you might want to see some gannets, the coast of the United Kingdom in the summer is definitely the place to do that. Fully 2/3 of the entire global population of northern gannets returns every year to the islands and cliffs of the British Isles to do their part to perpetuate the species. If you decide you only want to visit one spot in Britain, Bass Rock is a pretty darned good choice. If that 150K number seemed like a big number, it should; there are more breeding gannets there during the summer than any other spot on Earth. 

The gannet, like a lot of other seabirds, are an incredibly well put together and perfectly groomed bird. There's not a feather out of place. I feel this same way about the puffins we saw last year in Maine and on this trip on Lunga and the mollymawks we saw off the coast of Stewart Island in New Zealand. I'm guessing they have this appearance because they need to shed water efficiently on a day to day basis. 

Gannets are not the cuties that puffins are and they are not the spectacular gliders that the mollymawks (or lesser albatrosses) are but they are incredibly appealing just the same. The majorities of their bodies are almost pure white, with the exception of their yellow-tinged heads and the black tips on their wings. They really do stand out on the open water from all other species like kittywakes and various types of gulls due to their bright white color.

They are also spectacular divers. When they spot a school of fish below them in the water, they can fashion their bodies into virtual missiles, dropping from the sky at speeds up to 100 kilometers (or 60 miles) per hour. In this respect, they remind me a lot of the boobies we saw fishing down in the Galapagos a few years ago. Indeed, the long, razor-sharp gannet bill very much makes their head resemble a booby head, although the gannet body, particularly for its size (they are the largest seabird in the northern hemisphere) is far sleeker than the blue-footed booby.

Our trip from the Scottish Seabird Centre took us out of the harbor at North Berwick, past Craigleith Island and to Bass Rock. The entire duration of the tour was supposed to be one hour long and I guess that was true, but both Craigleith and Bass Rock are so close to the shore that this ride really does get you a lot of time to get close up looks at the gannets on the Rock.

Craigleith is home to about 15,000 nesting puffins in an average year. In a sign of how good our visit to Lunga earlier in the trip was, we barely paid much attention to the puffins on this part of the trip, preferring to try to spot some kittywakes while really wanting to see a ton of gannets. There are almost no puffins on Bass Rock, by the way, most notably because puffins burrow to make their nests and you can't do that in rock. There is one nesting pair of puffins on the Rock who have made their home in the crevices of the old castle wall built by the Lauders.

There are an astonishing number of nesting pairs of gannets (and their chicks) to watch on this tour. There is ample time to to watch them sit around (lots of that); take off and fly (sort of awkwardly); land after fishing (definitely awkwardly); and interact with each other. On the last point we managed to see a few couples bill fencing, a greeting ritual performed to strengthen the bond between pairs. The picture immediately below shows the end of that ritual.

Now, I am sure to the untrained eye, it appears that there are a lot of gannets in the pictures on this blog post. And no doubt, that is probably true, but maybe not the 150,000 that usually nest there in a typical summer. The islands around Britain had been hit this summer with an outbreak of avian flu, which had started to devastate some of the populations of birds nesting on the outlying islands, including at Bass Rock. 

The Seabird Centre does run trips to Bass Rock that land and allow you to walk around closer to the gannets but those were at least partially cancelled this summer due to the flu outbreak. We also heard after getting back home that landings at Lunga had been stopped due to the flu. I feel like we got really lucky with the spread of the flu. I can't imagine missing that puffin experience. We elected not to take the landing tour of Bass Rock specifically because we knew we already had the same thing scheduled at Lunga. I'm glad we didn't swap those two tours out. We definitely got lucky with the flu and our vacation plans.

The effect of the flu was devastatingly visible on our boat trip our of North Berwick, by the way. All kidding aside with the fact that we got lucky with the flu and our trip plans (because that's really way less important than dying birds), we did see a lot of dead birds around Bass Rock. Our guide told us some were likely victims of their own ability to land safely, but there's no doubt that some of the carcasses we sailed past were avian flu victims.

I don't have a list of bird species that I want to see in the wild before I leave this world. That would be a bucket list and I will never, ever make a list that once everything on it is done then I can die. But I for sure wanted to make getting close to some gannets a part of this trip to Scotland. I didn't really see when I would get this good an opportunity. 

The gannets on Bass Rock weren't the only gannets we saw on this trip. We spent time on several boats that were being followed by a couple or a few dozen of these birds. But the opportunity to see these spectacular creatures at Bass Rock was a real treat. One more species off the list (the list that doesn't exist, of course). I feel we did this one pretty comprehensively in just an afternoon that started out rainy and ended up being pretty much perfect.

As a closing note to this post, I will point out that gannets are heavily protected in Scotland, but there was a time when people used to eat these birds. The methods of cooking that our guide relayed to us were less than appetizing. Apparently, the birds were either traditionally cooked in rhubarb leaves or the young gannets used to be plucked from their nests and the flesh fermented. That second method sounds similar to what goes on in New Zealand today with the sooty shearwaters (or mutton birds) although I'm not sure they ferment the meat. The plate I had when we were there in 2019 didn't taste fermented in any way. 

I stuck to seafood or haggis in Scotland. No gannets on the menu for me.

I found it very difficult to photograph gannets in the air on this trip. I would have loved a close up shot of one in flight. Need to work on that skill. And quickly.

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How We Did It

This experience was pretty short and simple. We took the Seabird Catamaran Cruise offered by the Scottish Seabird Centre and then sat back and had them do all the work. The boat was small enough to offer some really good looks at the gannets but big enough that the cost didn't set us back too much. The crew of the boat did enough turning around so that each side of the boat got some good looks. We grabbed an edge seat towards the back, which seemed to be a good decision.

I know I downplayed the quality of the puffin sightings at Craigleith Island but if you have never seen these birds in the wild, you really can get pretty close to them on the water and that's honestly pretty exciting, That part of the experience didn't match what we saw in Maine last year or the prior week on Lunga but it's a great addition to the Bass Rock experience. Don't let my jaded view of that part of the trip cause you to not pay attention.

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