Isle of Man to Jura

Rob and I had another windswept trip to Ireland in a force 6 arriving at a Lough north of  Belfast after a chilly 8 hours. The following day the winds veered northerly so rather than fight a headwind we stayed put and had a day in Belfast. We did the Titanic museum and a bus tour centered mostly around the areas of the Troubles. Although Belfast is a run down city having had no investment for the 30 years of the troubles on the grounds that your investment would get blown up the are now few signs of those troubled times; I saw much more evidence in Londonderry last year. The only remaining monument to the troubles is a 'peace wall' built between a catholic and protestant area to stop them hurling missiles at each other. It still remains because the residents still feel safer with it up than down.



Belfast brought us our first sunshine, breakfast in the cockpit no less! A sign of things to come? No such luck! Our force 6 came back with a vengence and is still with us nearly a week later although we have had our share of sunshine thrown in.
The next leg was up the coast to the top of Ireland, past the beautiful Mull of Kintyre and on to a stop at Rathlin island where we were greeted by a flock of beautiful Eider ducks (as in Eider down)




From Rathlin to Islay and our first taste of Scotland, the Laphroag distillery (there are a total of 7 on the island!).The trade mark of the island whiskys is that the barley is smoked with smoke from peat fires, you could taste the smoke throughout the process and certainly in the finished product, many varieties of which were tasted! Sadly it doesn't do it for me; it tastes like it would make good toilet cleaner but its a tad expensive at £35 to £230 per bottle! My sister Caroline (something of a whisky fan) is now the proud owner of one square foot of the Laphroag estate for which she gets rent of one small bottle of whisky, but you have to go and collect it in person!

This years rent is partly consumed, a necessary part of establishing Caroline's new real estate!

 

We left Islay for Jura after our whisky session (force 6!) and were joined for half an hour by a couple of dolphins, beautiful creatures.

And here is another not quite so graceful creature fully dressed for battle; there is no such thing as bad weather as long as you've got good gear!

 Islay and its neighbour Jura are very harsh and barren. Heather, peat bog and rock make up the entire islands, and some very big hills! 

There were some beautiful views from the top.