We wanted to go to the Outer Hebrides so we had to head up the Sound of Mull again and into Tobermory. I’ll tell you, if I don’t see Tobermory again it will be too soon, I feel like I know it like the back of my hand we have been there so often. Anyway, from there we went out past Rum, Eigg & Muck, and made our way to Canna.
Leaving Tobermory (again!)
Canna in the distance Rum off to starboard
North Western end of Rum Sanday & Canna Approach
Canna is stunning
Our first trip ashore
We think this is our favourite place so far. You would think someone had turned the clock back many many years. There is no pub, no shop to speak of, no phone signal or Wi-Fi, just a beautiful wee island. Actually it’s two islands, Sanday and Canna but they are joined by a bridge. The shop I mentioned is a community shop selling fresh eggs, homemade cake milk and some other basics and is run on an honesty basis. If you buy something, you put a note of it in the book and leave your money in the honesty box.
We stayed here a couple of days and went walking. There are some lovely wee bays with gorgeous white sand, unfortunately we didn’t manage to go in for a dip, and being the Atlantic the water was a bit chilly
There are loads of seals, one of which comes out to all the boats when they come in and moor up. It just sits there, looking up at you waiting for you to throw some titbits in for it to eat. Gordon has named him Seal Diamond, which he thought was really funny – Gordon that is, not the seal.
We decided to drag ourselves away from Canna and thought we would head out to Barra. There was only one problem, our pilot book for Skye and western Scotland doesn’t include the Outer Hebrides.
Now we could just have taken a chance and used what we had available for navigation, but not having been there before, and given that we want to go to some of the other islands out that way, we decided to head back in a bit and try and get the pilot book for that area.
Easier said than done. Our best bet was Mallaig. One of the farmers on Canna very kindly phoned the chandlers in Mallaig but they didn’t have one. To cut a long story short, we headed to Mallaig and phoned Gael Force chandlers in Inverness who are having it delivered to Colin the Harbour Master in Portree , Skye for us on Tuesday.
