The Food, The Bed and The Story

In a Nutshell

The Food

It’s haggis but not as we know it

The bed

Very civilized ‘wild’ camping by the pier

Eigg even has its own taxi driver. A friendly and helpful guy called Charlie. His advice had reflected our instinct to stay this end of the island. At his cost as we had booked him to take us to Singing Sands, advised against it saying the singing sands would be a swamp and that there was an unfriendly bull in the area. I thanked him and repaid his generosity by providing him and his fellow islanders much laughter and entertainment in the hour it took me to put up one of the tents in the strong winds.

The story

The midges, the storm and the snoring

All too often the journey is a world, mostly hidden by cloud, whizzing past, 30,000ft below at close to the speed of sound. Today instead we took the slow boat and went the long way. Our reward was a world that lived and breathed around us in all her wildest beauty. As our boat slipped silently from jetty to jetty among the islands of the Inner Hebrides, people got off and got on to the sound of lapping waves and seagulls. Among rugged grassy hills, sheep looked on. Round the back of the Isle of Rum, the sea was wild. Thumps could be heard as the bow ploughed into huge waves followed by the hiss of sea water exploding and spraying right over us. We revelled in the thrill of this natural waterslide.

A dolphin jumped close to the boat. Visible only long enough for an excited passenger to shout and point. We grabbed our phones and took pictures of the sea where it had been. At Muck, a herd of seals sat among the rocks beside us making our day. Then, at last, we set sail for Eigg to land in the early afternoon.

With the weather as it was, we opted for a change of plan. We packed up the tents and decided to catch the Sunday afternoon boat back across to Mallaig to continue our adventures. The shelter of a Bunk House seemed a better bet if the wet and windy weather continued. Our trip may have been way too brief but, in that short time we laughed, we swatted midges, we snored and put up with snoring. We will be back.