Before reading this post, make sure you’ve read the last one, which is about our drive from Pitlochry to Fort William, with many stops! This post is about our day trip to Mull and Iona from Fort William, where we were staying.
We left Fort William quite early in the morning, because it was a really long day. Our first stop was for my dad, mostly, because he is the biggest fan of Monty Python. So we stopped at Castle Stalker, which is right on the coast between Fort William and Oban.
We then made it to Oban, where we were going to take the ferry to Craignure, which is one of the ports on the Isle of Mull.
Once we were on Mull, we drove across the island to Fionnphort.
It was a really, really long drive to Fionnphort. We were really relieved when we got there and were greeted with sunny skies. Fionnphort is where you get the ferry to Iona, which was our real destination!
I’m sad in general that we couldn’t have spent more time on Iona, but if we had stayed I really would have loved to go for a swim.
We walked through the main street and some of the old buildings.
But then we pretty much headed straight for Iona Abbey, which was the main thing we wanted to see. It was originally founded as a monastery in the 6th century, and a lot of the building and graves is from the 14th and 15th centuries, I think.
I’m really glad I finally got to go – Iona was always really far away and hard to get to, since I never had a car while I lived in Scotland.
For the rest of the day, we took the boat back to Mull, drove all the way across the island, got the ferry back to Oban, ate dinner in Oban, and then drove back to Fort William. The journey back was pretty brutal, but that was kind of our pilgrimage to Iona. It was something my parents especially wanted to see while they were there.
Check out the next post, which is about the last day of our road trip, where we went to Glenfinnan, Fort Augustus, and Urquhart Castle.
