This is the last day of our cruise. Tonight we sail to Glasgow, where will spend one day. We are in the lovely town of Tobermory: The town is, of course, tiny, but the setting is just beautiful.
Indeed queen Victoria kicked off the tourism industry here by declaring it the prettiest setting for a town she had ever seen. Nowadays, the setting is enhanced by the colorful houses lining the harbor.
The weather forecast was very iffy for today: wind and rain mostly…. And it was mostly wrong. It fact, it turned out very pleasant, with the odd shower here and there, but mostly sunny. Mull is the rainiest spot in Scotland, so we were lucky!
I went for a hike in Aroos park, where it feels almost like a tropical forest.
There is such a variety of moss, ferns and lichen! Our guide was very knowledgeable: here she is showing sphagnum moss, which has been used for millennia for its ability to hold and purify water.
This is a lungwort lichen- showing how clear the air is. Lichen is an early detector of pollution, and its presence and diversity here is great.
There were of course many wild flowers, including the ever present rhododendrons. They are beautiful, as I’ve said before, but not native and very invasive. 
In this park, they’ve tried to eradicate them by cutting them and then injecting the root with some poison (this shows the holes they drilled) but, only two years later, they are flourishing everywhere again.
Here are a couple of my favorite native flowers. More at the end of the blog.
The guide had warned us that there were many ticks in the park. I did not pay much attention to that until I looked at the pictures of flowers I had taken and saw that one.....
Aroos park is also the home of several 100 species of birds and in fact a destination for bird watchers from everywhere.
But the foliage is so dense that it’s really hard to see them. We could hear them all around us, but only this sweet robin showed his face. There are a couple of white tailed eagle nests too, but they are impossible to see through the trees.
There are many waterfalls in the park.
They provide the town, and the salmon farms with clean water - the pipe goes directly to the salmon farm (circle in the water), replacing the use of antibiotics to keep the fish healthy. More moss, lichen, flowers and waterfalls at the end of the blog.
In the afternoon, since it was Joe's turn to go and visit a castle, I had to uphold the family tradition and do a whiskey tasting- also Joe had mentioned that the guy doing the presentation, Robin Lain, aka, Scotland’s whiskey bard (that’s a small niche…) was great. He did not disappoint. He had great and funny stories, sang well, and knew a lot about whiskey. Who knew there was so much to say and sing about it! He was sort of like Pete Seeger, if Pete Seeger sang about whiskey instead of civil rights. Here is a sample "whiskey for breakfast." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb_vh2hRB14
Anyway, it was great, and I even enjoyed the whiskey. Turns out, I may just be snooty and prefer single malt….
Here is the dude that rebuilt the castle after the Brit’s burned it down.
Tomorrow with disembark in Glasgow, and get to tour the city a bit. The sea is rough this evening, but we got a nice sunset.
1 comment:
My father's first job as a Doctor was to stand in for the local doctor for a year on the Isle of Mull Just before world war II. He had many stories about what Island life like. In particular there was very active smuggling culture centered around whisky cigarettes wine and other highly taxed items.
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