A Journey to Iona......illustrated....Page two

A Tourist for a Day.

Despite being Scottish and having lived in Scotland all of my life I had never ventured to Iona until this summer. (2004)
However over the past few years I have developed a huge interest in the History of Scotland and I love all things ancient, from that it was a natural progression to visit Iona.
While researching other areas of Scottish history it became more and more obvious that I was missing something by not seeing Iona.
Burial place of the ancient Kings, that in itself would have been enough to get me there.

Most people visiting Iona do so as a religious pilgrimage, I think we went more to see and feel the sense of age than for truly religious reasons. I was baptised into the Scottish Church as a baby but I am not overtly religious.

My brother and sister in law, Billy and Christine have the same interest in ancient things so we left civilisation behind and became tourists for a day.
Note that word "day", in Tourist for a Day.
Anyone with half an ounce of common sense would have done this over at least two days unless they live a lot nearer Iona than I do.
Before I start calling my poor brother all sorts of names for this one day journey I had better do a little explaining.

We live in the central belt of Scotland making Oban from where the ferry sails to the islands about 3 hours drive away. So we think, ok lets go to Iona this week, watch the weather forecasts, hope the met office gets it right and go on a nice sunny day.
Fine so far, then I begin to realise this is going to be a very long day.
Bed and breakfast would be the thoughts of most people but that one does not work for me. I cannot stop a handy resting place and just book in, as I am disabled....oh how I hate that word...and use a wheelchair, therefore if I want to stay in a hotel, guest house or whatever it needs planning in advance.
Now as anyone with knowledge of the Scottish weather knows, you don't plan anything in advance if you want that illusive sunshine:-) What you do is, decide the night before and keep your fingers crossed that the morning does not bring rain.

Did I say morning?? I think I meant middle of the night, least that is what it felt like. Fall out of bed at 5 am, fall into the car (which fortunately I am not driving at this point) though I did offer, honestly I did:-)
My brother is disgustingly full of life at 5 am, I am still 99% asleep, just a touch better than the birds they were still 100% asleep!!

Farewell civilisation, we are off and one hour later we are driving up the loch sides towards Oban.
8.30 am and we are in Oban.
Now to find that ferry.
Arrive at the ferry ticket office, one car and three adults return to Mull plus 3 adults return to Iona please. All going well..........so far.
Nice lady at the ticket office tells us to make sure we tell the man directing the cars onto the Ferry that we need to be beside the lift to the upper decks because of my wheelchair.
Ok then, who changed the rules? last time I drove onto a ferry I stayed in the car, granted that was a 5 minute crossing and this was a 45 minute one.

Oh well, no worries, there is a lift so back in the car we go. Get to the point where we board the ferry, ask the nice man to direct us to park near the lift, no way........one large lorry already parked there. Pardon???????? Rapid thinking, Christine says fine, I will take you out of the car and go on as passengers, nope says the man, not allowed, but don't worry it is only about 12 feet from your car to the lift.........sighhh, ever tried explaining that if you cannot walk at all 12 feet might as well be 12 miles.

More rapid thinking, ( as the queue of cars behind grows impatient)..two who can walk one me who cannot, yeah sure we can do it, after all I got up at 5 am and I sure as heck was not going home!!
Parks car, opens door, looks at this 12 feet, well that was fine but it was 12 feet long by 2 feet wide. Large sigh from me, even larger one from the other two who had volunteered to more or less take all my weight while we did the soft shoe shuffle up 12 feet of iron floor.

Thankfully we were all very occupied with this manoeuvre as I may well have killed anyone with a camera.
Little and large?? Well lets just be polite and say Christine is only around 5 feet tall, Billy is around 8 inches more than that and I am somewhere in the middle.
I WAS somewhere in the middle!!, squeezing up this two feet gap in a none too neat little line....a sideways line. Was I glad to see the wheel chair waiting at the lift, I was, and I am sure Christine and Billy were more than glad.
Are we having fun? sure we are, actually we were, that was part of the problem we were laughing too much.

Mission accomplished and here we are sitting on the outer deck watching Oban disappear.
Now for some photos, press next to continue, please.