Having a Great Time on Islay
Sunday, September 23 2007
John Hawkins made his first trip to Islay beginning of September and he generally had a great time on Islay, according to his blog posts. He left from London on the first of September and spent a week in Scotland, staying on Islay for four days where he arrived on Tuesday 4 September. He arrived in dense fog and was hardly able to find the White Hart Hotel to trace the footsteps of Alfred Barnard, who visited Islay in the late 1800s to visit the island's distilleries. John writes about his arrival on Islay in his first post Edinburgh to Islay.
On Wednesday he visited several southern distilleries and ended up in the next accommodation from Margaret Rozga where he speaks highly of. 'After leaving Lagavulin, we raced over to our accommodation for the next two nights - a guest house called Kilmeny near Ballygrant - in an attempt to get there in time for afternoon tea. Although we got there a bit later than we'd originally said, we were greeted very warmly by our host, and afternoon tea was all laid out for us in our suite. The suite was utterly fantastic - it was certainly in a totally different league to any B&B I had ever stayed in before, and I struggle to think of any hotel I've stayed at which had nicer decor. It really was quite beautiful, as hopefully the pictures attest.'
Thursday was for John a day of discovering the island and after a visit to Finlaggan and Kilchoman he ended up in Portnahaven where he writes: 'We spent a couple of hours in this lovely little place in something of a daydream - it was just so tranquil there. We took a walk around the harbour, then stopped off for a quick drink in the great (but tiny) pub there, and then took a walk a bit further along the coast to sit on a clifftop, and watch the waves crashing against the rocks. Utter bliss.' John left Islay on Friday after a visit to the Caol Ila distillery and one of his last words about Islay are: 'So we headed back to Port Askaig after that, and got on the ferry. I was really quite sad to leave Islay - even though we'd only been there three nights, I had immediately fallen in love with the place.'
Besides these four posts on his blog he also took quite a lot of pictures from his trip. Thanks John for this comprehensive and positive travel report.
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