The life and times of purplekitten

Yesterday we ventured,via bus, to Tobermory. The journey was suitably hair-raising: the road is quite as scary as I remember. It appears that we must cycle it though, as there is a ferry from Tobermory that will take us to Kilchoan on the mainland, and philb wishes to ride around that area. Therefore it is necessary to cycle to Tobermory.
Tobermory was more or less as I remember it; I found myself irritated by the Balamory merchandising everywhere, but, as philb pointed out, visitors have certain expectations and it would be foolish not to cater to them.
We had some nice ice-cream from the Island Bakery, and bimbled up and down the harbour for a while until the last bus back at 2pm.
Today we ventured out shortly after breakfast, aiming to be Doing Things before the heat of midday, but even at 9am it was excessively hot. We walked up the hill above Dervaig, on the Tobermory road and stopped to admire the view. From there, we could see all the way to the sea and the island of Coll in the distance. We entered an eerily-neat conifer forest and were struck by the theatrical placement of some standing stones. Most impressive. Having not taken the map with us, we then blundered around the forest, climbing higher and higher, looking for the further sets of stones but failed to find them. On later perusal of the map, we were actually within a whisker of them, and the hill we were stumbling around on is called Glen Gorm. Struck me as being made mostly of peat bog and insects.
Having been stupidly hot this morning, it is now pleasantly cool and cloudy. We shall venture out to the pub for dinner and then probably walk around the loch.
Incidentally, the local beer is fanastic: we’ve been drinking the Island Pale Ale which is light, delicately-fragrant and most welcome after a hot day. I wonder if it for sale in bottles anywhere, as a quick search of Tobermory’s shops proved fruitless.
Tomorrow we venture to Treshnish and Crackaig, which are further round than Calgary, although I hope to stop for a paddle again.