In July, we spent a week in an apartment within walking distance of Eilean Donan, arguably the most romantic and most photographed of all Scotland’s castles. It’s a bit of a cheat though – originally established in 1230, it was destroyed during the Jacobite uprising in 1719 and what you see today was rebuilt between 1912 and 1932 by a British army officer, John MacRae-Gilstrap. The MacRae clan has ancestral links to the area and its war memorial is below the castle walls (see gallery below).
We took a stroll round the exterior after we arrived late on Saturday afternoon, and returned a few days later to look inside. No interior photography was allowed, but I think the exterior is the spectacular part anyway.
In the last picture above we are looking down from the castle onto the remains of a medieval tower (more or less obscured by a tree). Beyond it, immediately before the northern end of the road bridge, you can just make out our apartments. To the right of the bridge is the village of Dornie, and we finished our afternoon / early evening by following the dead-end road through the village to its termination at the small settlement of Bundalloch (just over a mile each way). We could again see our apartments on the other side of Loch Long.
In the last image above, the windows just above the fence belonged to us. I can highly recommend Eilean Donan Apartments which are operated by the same trust which owns the castle. The building was initially constructed as a hotel in the late 19th century, but has been extensively refurbished over the last few years into eleven self-catering units for 2-8 people. We loved it!
We settled in for our first evening, but the view across Loch Long to Dornie kept distracting us from making plans for the next seven days. These pictures were taken around 10pm – it’s wonderful when it stays light so late.
Spoiler alert: we did make some plans. What would the next day bring? Coming next – Applecross.
The Oor Wullie trail which graced Scotland’s cities this summer finished at the end of August, and during September each city auctioned off its statues. In total, they have raised an amazing £1.3m for children’s hospital charities. Metal Oor Wullie, designed by Jason Patterson and exhibited in Glasgow’s George Square, was the biggest fundraiser at £25,000.
Although we’d visited Islay before, we’d never been to its neighbour, Jura. It’s a short hop on the ferry from Port Askaig to Feolin – there’s a timetable, but no booking. However, if there are too many cars for one trip, as there were the day we travelled, the boat will make the five minute crossing several times to clear the queue.
We chose two contrasting distilleries for our tours – one small and privately owned, the other large and owned by a multi-national. O
Next, we had a couple of hours in Bowmore, the island’s main settlement, to have lunch, look around the distillery (no tour) and explore the unusual Kilarrow Parish Church (1767), otherwise known as the Round Church for obvious reasons. That’s it at the top of the hill, above. There was a great view over the distillery roofs from its upper windows.
At 2pm we met Donald again and set off for our afternoon visits. The morning had been spent in the north of the island, now we were heading back south where three distilleries lie in close proximity to each other. The furthest away is 
We didn’t visit Lagavulin next – we drove past it because we had a 3pm tour booked at 
In truth, there’s not much to see of the ruins, but we enjoyed our visit all the same. We started in the small visitor centre which has an interesting display of artefacts discovered during archaeological excavations, along with a fabulous new virtual-reality reconstruction of the settlement in the early 15th century. You can see John totally immersed in it above.
From the Visitor Centre, we took the path down to the site, crossing the reed beds of the loch on duckboards.
From the loch, we crossed an area of open moorland to take a parallel track back – this took us through the village of Keills. The name derives from the Gaelic for church, Cill, and the graveyard here contains the ruins of an old chapel attributed to St Columba. I can never resist an old graveyard, especially one with a view like this. Headstones which caught my eye included one for a father and son who died a fortnight apart, and the memorial to Piper Lily MacDougall aged 100 years. There must be interesting stories attached to both of those.
