Standing Stones

We had a very slow morning.  Our friends eventually headed off to play golf, with a plan to meet them in Lochranza for lunch.  We set off a bit later and had a leisurely drive up the west side of the island, where we saw lots of seal lazing on the rocks.  It was another quite dull day, and we couldn’t see across the water to Kintyre.  As we neared Lochranza, we hit a long queue of traffic waiting on the ferry.  It took us some time to get past it,  We met up with our friends at the distillery, where we discovered that one of the other ferries wasn’t working, hence the number of people trying to leave (and I assume travel to) the island from Lochranza.
 
TT and L only wanted to take a look in the distillery shop – but of course purchases were made.  We had planned to have lunch at the fabulous sandwich station, but it had an enormous queue presumably from those waiting on the ferry, so our fall back was the distillery café, only to find that it was closed today.  A hasty third choice was made, and we drove further round the island to Corrie, where we had a really lovely lunch.   I wanted to go for a walk, so we three drove back to Machrie, and walked to the standing stones, one of my favourite walks.  It’s an easy walk on a fairly flat track.  We couldn’t believe how wet and muddy  the track was in places , and decided that like yesterday’s walk,  it was just another sign of how much rain the west of Scotland has had over the summer.  The sun made a welcome appearance when we reached the stones, which added to the atmosphere.  We  didn’t hang around long, and had a brisk walk back to the car, before heading back home to get changes to go out for dinner. 
 
We set out to the bus stop, and couldn’t believe that tha bus left early and drove past us.  Luckily two of our party were lagging behind and flagged the bus down, got on and told the driver he had left too early – he thought he had left at the right time.  They came back to the bus stop for us and we all enjoyed the journey up to Pirnmill, in the evening sunshine, looking across to Kintyre – which was still not very clear, but was a lovely silhouette.  We enjoyed another lovely meal and all ate rather too much I think.  We finished our meal and drinks in good time to catch the bus back home, where more drinks appeared, and we all went to bed rather too late.
 
This is a rare sighting of BB and TT at Machrie standing stones.  The extra was the sunset at Pirnmill, looking over to Kintyre.