Welcome to the Grahams on Tour

We were on an early ferry from Port Ellen back to the mainland but as we overnighted just a few hundred yards away we were saved from an early start. It was a lovely morning so once we'd parked up in the boarding area for the ferry we had a wander round the harbour taking some pictures across the very still waters. Our ferry soon arrived - the MV Finlaggan, named after the castle of the Lord of the Isles that we'd visited the day before. It's an exceptionally nice ferry - ver

After a pretty lazy week really we decided to do a bit more sightseeing on our last full day on the Island. First we headed to the lovely little village of Portnahaven, which is at the south end of the peninsula that Port Charlotte sits further up. It's a very pretty little village, with views across to the lighthouse on Orsay and across the little harbour where several seals were playing. I think our dog Ludo would have liked to head out and join them for a swim! After a goo

After several days of not moving the motorhome - either just staying local or using the bus to get around - we finally decided to do some more exploring. Several people had mentioned to us that we really had to visit the beach at Machir Bay so despite the weather being a bit iffy we decided to take the short drive there from Port Charlotte, passing the small distillery at Kilchoman on the way. The beach turned out to be lovely - long, wide and clean and with (barring a couple

We found out there was a bus from Port Charlotte to the main town on Islay, Bowmore, and that you could take dogs on it. We'd been meaning to try Ludo on a bus for a while now so decided to kill two birds with one stone, as we wanted to do some shopping there as well as visiting the distillery. Ludo was good on the bus and was also a point of interest for chatting with some of the locals on the bus, so we caught up on some of the local gossip! We had a quick visit to the harb

We awoke to a pretty wet morning so decided to have a lazy day (they used to be "duvet days" before we got Ludo, however he's a lively boy so even these days involve a couple of hours of walkies now). There is a small beach right beside the Port Mhor campsite so when the weather had improved a bit we took him down there for a bit of a play on the sand and in the water. He really enjoys swimming into the sea to retrieve his tennis ball so that gave him and us some good exercis

The weather was a bit up and down today but we managed to squeeze a couple of nice walks in between the showers. We're staying at the Port Mhor campsite, which is part of a community project at the Port Mhor centre, just outside Port Charlotte. I think it's the only place on Islay with electric hook ups, plus it has good facilities and a nice little cafe. The hookups are right on the sea front which is nice. Can be a bit breezy though. Costs are £9 per person per night, plus

We awoke to a lovely morning, with a stunning view over the Crinan Canal from our bed. Our ferry wasn't until 1pm and as we were only about 20 miles away from the terminal we had loads of time to kill. First I headed out to take some sunrise pictures: We then headed out with Ludo, taking down down the canal for bit then heading up a nature trail we'd seen heading off from the canal towpath. This initially headed around a little loch before heading uphill, and we spotted a ver

125 miles, 25.4mpg We're booked onto the CalMac ferry to Islay tomorrow so decided to take out time wandering up from Edinburgh and wild camping the night before the ferry. When we were in Lochgilphead a few weeks back we had a nice walk along the Crinan Canal and say a really nice spot where a few motorhomes were wild camping so decided to go there ourselves this time. It's a lovely spot beside some of the loch gates and we were lucky in being able to get parked at one end o