Tuesday May 6th - Small Isles

After all the cycling on Monday there remained only thirty miles and a short ferry trip to get back to Kyle, one day's worth of riding for two days. I was camped near Arisaig, from which day cruises leave for the Small Isles, and on that particular day the boat was visiting Eigg and Rum.

The boat called at Eigg and there was a choice of either getting off to spend the day there, or continuing for another hour to visit Rum. I decided to stay on and spent a baking hot couple of hours wandering around the small village of Kinloch which consists of a small port, a castle, general store, craft shop, tea room and post office. Supposedly Rum has some of the worst midges in Scotland but they weren't evident today.

I visited the craft shop, a small wooden hut containing a great variety of jewellery, crochet items, picture frames and other handmade crafts. The bloke behind the counter told me his wife made everything in there. He was a creative type too, a carpenter, working on anything from furniture to houses. They had lived on the island for thirteen years and only went over to the mainland about five times a year.

We got back on the boat and, after stopping off to pick up the Eigg daytrippers, we headed back for the mainland. It was a fun day out I suppose. On the boat, we saw a few seals and seabirds - although not having binoculars, I'm not sure I got the most out of it. One lady very kindly let me borrow hers to see distant golden eagles over the cliffs of Eigg, although you could still only make out a small dot.

Dinner was a classically horrible camping meal, an uninspired mess composed of all the leftover stuff in my panniers and a couple of tins from the local co-op. Yum.