Unexpected

We cycled from Craignure down the road by Loch Spelve, encountering a stand-off between a male peacock and a male turkey. Both were strutting their stuff: the turkey making loud cackling noises while the peacock shivered his feathers. It was extremely impressive, all the more so for the unexpected performance. The peacock won, in my opinion.

The road wound up and down through rhododendrons - a giveaway of a Victorian mansion nearby - and was extremely picturesque with the loch and the mountainous background. We hunted around for some standing stones and were very disappointed with a group of rocks in a field. As we turned to go back to the bicycles, Fred spotted a sign tacked on to a fence. On closer inspection, we realised that the standing stones were in another field and we'd been tutting over some random rocks placed in a circle. The actual standing stones were magnificent and some of the best that I've seen, so that'll teach me to tut. We stopped for a cup of tea at Laggan Sands by the castle, watching a Labrador running about on the beach.

After the long slog back up the road to join the A849 (which was very busy with tourist traffic to the Iona ferry and so not much fun), we pedalled and pedalled and pedalled and pedalled with glorious mountains around us and various sheep to Pennyghael where there was a shop and a hotel. There'd been no civilisation in between and we were quite hungry and exhausted. However, the hotel was £100 a night, which was just too pricey considering that the weather was fine (so good that I suffered sunburn on half my left hand where it wasn't covered by my top.) The hotel wasn't serving hot food until later so Fred suggested we have dinner on a dun. That proved too problematic, though - the peak of the dun was just too windy for the stove. We were mainly disappointed because the alliteration promised to be so good. Instead, we had dinner on the shore of Loch Scridain, with a continuous scolding from two oystercatchers annoyed at our trespassing.

Bellies full, we pedalled and pedalled and pedalled and pedalled along Loch Scridain and over the Ross of Mull (where we saw several short-eared owls) to collapse at the pub at Fionnophort, 58 miles from where we started this morning. It was a very long run, but we decided not to cycle tomorrow, but go boat-tripping instead. The well-earned pint of beer tasted superb and the sun was still shining.

The campsite nearby at Fidden was on the beach and we watched a most fantastic sunset. I didn't mind at all that we were woken the next morning at 4am with "BAAAAA!" The farmer must smile when he puts his sheep out to pasture around the tents at that time.

More pictures from the day here.