We spent pretty much the whole of the final day travelling back to Edinburgh. After the magic of the previous two days on Mull and Iona, this was a disappointing day, if truth be told. Lots of time in the mini-coach again, and this time the scenery wasn’t quite so beautiful. We also took a diversion that, on reflection, wasn’t ideal. Once we got off the ferry at Oban we were offered a choice – a direct drive back to Edinburgh with a break in Oban first, or a detour around part of the Kintyre peninsula, south to Kilmartin, then turning northwards at Lochgilphead and up through Inverary and back onto the expected route at Tarbet, on Loch Lomond. The consensus on the coach was that the Kilmartin diversion sounded good so that was the way we went.
I suppose, looking back on it, that in fact the scenery was beautiful, and once again the weather was good. But this was the fourth day of long drives in the mini-coach, and I think this was one too many remote highland scenic drives. In fact, I can’t remember much about it at all, to be truthful. Was there a strange ‘standing stone’ monument that we stopped at? Or was that another day? I can’t even remember where we stopped for lunch. Even looking at the time-stamps on my images from that day doesn’t help – I’ve got a load from the ferry to Oban at around 10:30, and another load at 3:30pm at Tarbet pier on Loch Lomond, but nothing in between. So I have no real memories of that drive at all – it obviously made a big impression on me.
We got to Tarbet in the mid afternoon and spent about 30 minutes there, before heading back to Edinburgh. I think we avoided Glasgow – well, it was late afternoon on a Friday – and eventually joined the M9 at Stirling for the drive into Edinburgh, and we got back to Edinburgh bus station at around 7pm. Then it was back to the hotel where I recall that we ate in our room – room service – and subsequently went down to the bar for a couple of glasses of wine. And that was the end of the tour.
We travelled back to Sheffield on the train the following day, but we had time for a bit of a walk and a coffee before we checked out of the hotel. As you can see from one of the images below, Val decided to think she was on a beach – after all, there were deck chairs and the sun was shining!
In the next (and final) post from this trip I’ll give my thoughts about this tour and compare it with last year’s, to Arran.
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