A Huffin' Puffin

Summer Holidays Backblip No.3

After a brief chat with the friendly man in the Tobermory Co-op the previous evening, we decided to head to Fionnphort and see if we could take a trip to the island of Staffa, a nature reserve several miles away.

After a drive, on challenging? single track roads around the coast, we arrived at Fionnphort and enlisted the help of the very nice Caledonian Macbrayne woman collecting tickets for the ferry to Iona. She called "Davy" for us and booked the trip, departing at 2 that afternoon.

We then set ourselves up on the beautiful, white, sandy beach for a spot of picnicking and rockpooling. Davy's boat arrived bang on time and we headed out for a wet (turns out it's not a particularly good idea to stand on the leeward side of the boat when sailing in to the wind, but F didn't seem to mind!) journey, we arrived at Staffa. Fingal's cave was awesome but nothing prepared us for the experience of having twenty or so puffins gather around us on the cliff-tops - half an hour I (and I suspect the kids) will never forget.

The journey home was a little less eventful than the outward one (no crashing waves or seals), with both F and H falling asleep on the crossing back to Mull. A late dinner and they collapsed exhausted in to bed, allowing me the time to reflect on the day (and make C extremely jealous with my tales of puffins!).

A cracking day!

:-)