Bus to Bowmore

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 harbour before heading to the distillery.

There was a 11am distillery tour at Bowmore that I wanted to get on and despite it being full they squeezed me in, which saved us from hanging around for the 2pm tour.

Fiona headed off to give Ludo a walk and to find somewhere dog friendly for a coffee and I headed off on the tour.

The tour was excellent and also great value at only £10. Not only do you get the 1 hour tour you also get to sample 3 of the whiskies - the 12, 15 and 18 years old and even get to keep the glass. Great value!

The photo above was in the "Tun room" and each of the vats there has a name plate relating to a previous owner. The one above was "Grigor" which is my brother-in-law's family name. Is there something he's not telling me about his family history!?

After the tour of the distillery was finished we went to their very nice bar for the tasting.

They also have a bottle of the Bowmore 1957 there - there are only 12 of them in the world and the last one that was auctioned went for £150,000! Expensive tipple...

The samples are very well presented, with the 15 & 18 year olds being in little bottles if you decide not to drink them there (which I didn't).

If you're so inclined the bar also has a lot of rare Bowmore whiskies - some you can no longer buy - and quite a few folks on my tour indulged in those.

Instead I headed to the shop where I bought a few bits including a sample set with 3 x 200ml bottles - one each of the 12, 15 and 18 year olds that we'd sampled. That was also a bargain at £45 as it's £57.99 on Amazon.

While I'd been on the tour Fiona had found one of the local bars was dog friendly and had a coffee there, so we returned for her to have another and for me to have a couple of pints as the tour had given me a thirst!

Ludo is getting used to being in bars now! An essential part of his socialisation training!