Islay: the Rhinns of Islay

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View across Loch Indaal from John Francis Campbell Monument

The Rhinns of Islay is the peninsula which makes up the north-west of the island. We’d been as far as Port Charlotte on our whisky tour, so the next day we decided to explore the Rhinns’ furthest end. But first we stopped to climb a small, monument-topped hill near Bridgend, from where we could see across Loch Indaal to the route we would take. The monument is to John Francis Campbell (1821-1885), a descendant of Daniel Campbell who bought Islay in 1726. John would have inherited Islay himself, had his father not run up huge debts forcing him to sell up in the 1840s. However, John carved out a reputation for himself in other fields, as a renowned author and scholar who became an authority on Celtic folklore producing the four-volume collection Popular Tales of the West Highlands.

John Francis Campbell Monument
John Francis Campbell Monument
John Francis Campbell Monument

From here, we drove to the end of the Rhinns to explore the twin coastal villages of Port Wemyss and Portnahaven, both built in the 1830s to house tenants who were cleared from the island’s interior. The Campbell of the day, Walter Frederick, named Port Wemyss after his father-in-law, the 8th Earl of Wemyss. (He also founded Port Charlotte and Port Ellen, called after his mother and his wife respectively.)

Rhinns of Islay Lighthouse
Port Wemyss

We found a small parking area in Port Wemyss, just across from the small island of Orsay on which stands the Rhinns of Islay lighthouse, built by Robert Stevenson in 1825. From here we followed a 2.5km loop through both villages. Burnside Lodge in Port Wemyss operates as a café in the summer – as this was May it wasn’t open, but we were delighted to discover the Cake Cupboard! Flasks for tea and coffee, a selection of delicious home baking and an Honesty Box to pay for it all. We had a break here before we’d even started our walk …

Cake Cupboard
Cake Cupboard
Cake Cupboard

Following the pretty coastal path through the village we could see seals basking on the rocks over on Orsay.

Coastal path
Seals on Orsay from Port Wemyss Coastal Path

Back on the road, we reached Portnahaven – quirkily decorative.

Portnahaven
Portnahaven
Portnahaven

We discovered that the Parish Church was having a coffee morning – well, it would have been rude not to visit, don’t you think? Their cakes were good too – this was a day of appalling diet.

Portnahaven Parish Church
Portnahaven
Portnahaven
Portnahaven
Portnahaven

We continued to waddle round the village, making our way back to Port Wemyss along the coast. I wonder who lost a hat?

Portnahaven
Who lost a hat
Portnahaven
Looking over to Orsay
Looking back to Portnahaven

Next stop, Port Charlotte where we started by visiting the Museum of Islay Life, housed in an old church.

I found lots of interest here including, amongst other things, an old light from the Rhinns Lighthouse which we’d just seen:

Rhinns Lighthouse
Rhinns Lighthouse

An example of the illicit stills we kept reading about:

Illicit still
Illicit still

And a display about the loss of the Tuscania and Otranto in 1918, the ships commemorated by the American Monument which we’d visited on our first day. This included the notebook of local police sergeant Malcolm MacNeill who went to great lengths in his attempts to identify the bodies washed ashore – here he lists the property of each man found (taken through glass, sorry about the awful picture, but I found it too moving to leave out).

WW1 display
Sgt MacNeill’s notebook

Most intriguingly, I photographed the group of pipers below because it included a MacAffer (my great-grandfather’s sister married a MacAffer) and only realised when preparing this post that it also included Piper Lily MacDougall whose gravestone I featured a couple of weeks ago. I was interested because she had such a long life, dying aged 100 in 2014. It doesn’t say on the museum caption when the photograph was taken, but I bought a book of old Islay which includes the same image and gives the date as 1972, so Lily would have been 58 here.

Islay Pipers
Piper Lily MacDougall, ged 100

After the museum, we went on another short loop walk (5 km – not quite enough to work off all that cake). We passed the hotel and its pretty garden …

Port Charlotte Hotel
Port Charlotte Hotel garden

… before following the shore to the lighthouse at Rubh’an Duin.

Port Charlotte
Rubh’an Duin lighthouse
Rubh’an Duin lighthouse

Then through a field observed by curious sheep, across the road and up a farm track with evidence that the farmer grows grain for nearby Bruichladdich. There used to be another distillery actually in Port Charlotte, Lochindaal, which closed in 1929.

Curious sheep
Growing for Bruichladdich

We continued to climb above the village where we got good views over Loch Indaal and Port Charlotte and were terrorised (well, I was) by another herd of excitable cattle – not the beautiful highland cows shown below who allowed us to pass without showing much interest in us at all.

Loch Indaal
Loch Indaal
Loch Indaal and Port Charlotte
Heilan’ coos
Loch Indaal and Port Charlotte

The journey back was on a minor road which took us down to the pier for a final look at the village.

Port Charlotte from pier
John at Port Charlotte pier

From here, we returned to our cottage. I can’t remember what we cooked for dinner that night, but I hope it was suitably nutritious to counteract all that cake!

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66 Comments »

  1. Beautiful photos, especially the one right at the top. I had a childhood friend whose last name was Wemyss. I wonder if she was from the family you mentioned, or whether Wemyss is a fairly common name from those parts?

    Jude

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    • Thank you! One of the beauties of someone commenting on an old post is that I have to look back to remember what I said and thus get to relive it all again. Wemyss is not a terribly common name, but it is a clan name so I guess if you went far enough back they’d all be related. One of my cousins married a Wemyss but I don’t think he’s from a grand family!

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  4. Hi Anabel!
    Sorry, I know I totally disappeared. It’s been a hard year for me. The first part of the year was total crazyness at work… and then my boss decided to switch my timetable around. After 15 years of working on the late, I’m now working on the early. I can’t tell you how debilitating it is, I can’t seem to make sense of my time.
    Well, anyway.
    I keep telling me that now I’m going back to all my blogging friends, I’m acting awful on everyone. And I mean it. I have to find a way to organise my time again.

    What beautiful places. I love that mix of white and blue, it gives me a sense of peace 🙂

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  6. Lighthouses and stills! What more could you want? Not sure when we’ll get up to Scotland next but those islands are looking fabulous especially in the great weather you look like you’ve had.

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  7. Fabulous scenery, and you certainly had good weather that day. I particularly love that first shot and the one of Portnahaven with the colourful boats pulled up on the grass 🙂

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  9. More coos! And cake! The cake cupboard is a great idea, and there’s definitely nothing wrong with two cakes in a day. I’m quite sure I’ll be having two pieces of cake today myself, but it is the day after my birthday, and that cake is not going to eat itself!

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  10. Beautiful scenery indeed. I particularly like all those whitewashed little houses, the sheep and the highland cattle!

    Ah what’s life if we can’t have a day of eating just cake. 🙂

    Peta

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  11. I love how your posts combine stunning scenery with the history of the land, often with the aid of museums. It’s nice to see how it looks now, and also to understand what happened there years ago. (And as for the cake, hey….it was meant to be eaten! Never feel guilty about eating cake is my motto!)

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  13. What a lovely post! I do love your pops of orange colour in the photographs above, they really spring to life, but then they are all excellent.

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  15. Hi Anabel – well what an amazing day out – beautiful weather, sad memories, ancestral moments to gather in and absorb … sounds like a place to return to. Loved all your photos and descriptive pieces … cheers Hilary

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  17. Another post that carries me away to a land far away from where I live. Yet, beautiful! Anabel, you remind me of the precious gift of health. A great deal of walking and climbing is necessary to access many of the areas you and your husband explore. The Honest Box says a great deal about the area. A poignant display behind the glass. An interesting post. I love all the photos!

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  21. What a gorgeous place, and beautiful photos, Anabel. I’m sure you loved walking all over, even if you did have to waddle! I wonder about the American ships that were lost at the end of WWI. How wonderful that someone tried to document all their belongings. Were they merchant marines? My first husband wrote a book about all the merchant ships that were lost in WWII: Mathews Men. Were these ships lost as part of WWI or just due to weather, I wonder.

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    • It’s not uncommon to see female pipers in pipe bands, though there are more men – maybe something to do with lung capacity? One of our best known pipers is Louise Marshall who plays at a lot of official events. And going even further back than Lily, Bessie Watson piped for the Suffragettes when she was 9!

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  25. A day that includes cake – twice – is a great day in my opinion, even without all the lovely scenery and bits of history. You know you’re in a special place when you find an Honesty Box at a Cake Cupboard 🙂

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  28. What a beautiful place, and you had a gorgeous day for it. I’m hugely impressed by your ability to find cafes — and a cake cupboard — on your travels. T and I seem to have a cafe hex on us.

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