Big day for bikers
Tens of thousands of “hogs” roared into Prague yesterday as HarleyDavidson fans celebrated the 115th anniversary of the motorcycle makers.
A fe s t i v a l of sunshine has spilled across the land and every one of us has a free invitation, not quite believing our good fortune and catching ourselves when we moan it’s too warm.
We’ve been given a break by Apollo himself.
But like a lover standing at the door with bags packed, by the time the sun had come out, we had made our minds up to leave.
This month, millions of us are boarding flights booked in the grip of winter, rueing the times we’ve stood by the lochs, on the beaches, in the mountains and on the islands swearing that if only we had the weather, we wouldn’t go anywhere else in the world. Well, this year, we do.
Hauling through an evercha ng ing l a nds cape of mountains and lochs, the train reaches Oban at 8.30am. The town’s cafes are open early to catch the carry-on coffee crowd, as tourists – American, French, German, Italian and Japanese – stream through the streets towards the CalMac port and on to a ferry bound for an island.
I join them and, as we set sail for Craignure on the Hebridean island of Mull, I wonder how many of us have left our country behind to head for theirs, landing in destinations where the mercury doesn’t rise as high as it did on the airport tarmac we left behind. The crossing is blustery but the sun continues to shine and the passengers gather on the upper deck. I spot a young family and a young boy wearing a skip- cap with the word “Scot land’ emblazoned across the front.
“It’s normally windy and rainy and it snows,” says 10-year- old Alastair Doolan, road-tripping with his mum Heather and dad Damien, crossing the Sound of Mull to explore Mull itself, then the archipelago islands of Iona and Staffa. “It’s been great.” Heather said: “We normally go to somewhere like Lanzarote but we made the decision to stay based on the weather. It’s not cheaper day-to-day but you’re not paying for flights.
“Maybe if it was like this all the time there might be too many tourists.”
Damien said: “Within an hour of getting into the car, we were in the middle of nowhere. And if you want to fly for five hours to get that, rather you than me.”
The ferry berths at Craignure, where a small f leet of buses waits to scoop up daytrippers, winding along some of Mull’s 138 miles of single track road.
Some are bound for Iona, the small island with big significance, being the landing site of St Columba in 563AD, bringing Catholicism to these shores.
Others are set for Staffa, one of the Treshnish Islands, a puffin colony atop a remarkable island of columns of basalt rock.
The bus driver, Chris, who spends half the year in Wales, is an excellent guide. He points out castles, ruined crofts, crannogs, encourages us to look for otters, sea eagles and red deer, explaining the island-life concept of “honesty boxes”, where passers-by can pick up anything from a pound of fresh mussels to a shoulder of venison, paying whatever they decide.
Chris deposits us at Fionnphort and we embark on the tiny ferry to Iona, where Lincolnshirebased Glasweg ian James Richardson, chairman of the Rutland Canoe Club, is coming