Monday 29 July

Monday July 29

A fairly early start was the order of the day today as we had a booking at 12.15 not too far out of Oban. Oban is on the west coast of Scotland and opposite the Isle of Mull. It was a damp start and the clouds were very low and ominous. We did indeed travel through some very heavy periods of rain but as we approached our morning tea stop, The Green Welly at Tyndrum, the weather improved and it was quite fine. It was not a good day for photo shoots! The Green Welly has a couple of great gift shops full of Scottish items. I found a lovely book about the Tobermory Cat (Isle of Mull) who is very famous and a star in his own right!!

We then travelled on to a place called Cruachan where there is a power station buried deep underground. We took a guided tour of the facility and it is indeed interesting. There are four turbines that can generate electricity for the National Grid at 28 seconds notice. So they are a rapid response power station that provides electricity at peak periods. There is a dam high in the hills above the station entrance and water is released from the dam through large pipes. At a certain point the water is split into four smaller pipes and drops down onto the turbines thus creating enough force to generate electricity, 440 megawatts being their maximum. The water ends up in the tail race and can cause lots of waves but for a system employing screens that helps dissipate the energy. What makes this station special though is the fact that the system can be reversed and the water can be driven back up to the dam when the turbines are not needed to generate electricity.

Across Loch Awe, which is one of the largest lochs in Scotland at 26 miles long, there is a huge Rainbow Trout farm, one of the largest in Europe. There are also a pair of Ospreys nesting across the loch from the Power Station. After lunch at the café there we headed for Oban, we sat outside for our lunch and survived despite some heavy rain again! On the way to Oban we again passed through a belt of heavy rain but it had disappeared by the time we reached our destination.

With the help of a map we found our hotel, bit of a dive and the rooms were more like cells than rooms!! The guy in the bar checked us in and was very helpful. Parking was the big issue but we have a plan sorted out and hope it works for us. We found a coffee shop that made very nice coffee, thank goodness, and sorted out where to go for dinner. Dinner was at the Royal Hotel, it was an excellent meal (I had Steak and  Oban Ale Pie) and good value for money. We both had a cider with our meal and finished off with a Baileys on Ice!!

We had a wander through town before heading back to our Hotel cells and an early night!! We found a gifty type shop that had some gorgeous cats carved out of wood and then coloured, there were two different sets of three – too large for my suitcase!! 

Oban is typical of so many fishing villages that have gone touristy! Fishing is still active and there were a huge number of people in town, there were also screaming seagulls along with fish and chip cafes.

 In many ways it reminds me of Mevagissy in Cornwall, I remember a family holiday there as a child. 

We have a long day tomorrow visiting the islands of Mull, Staffa and Iona.