Across Mull to Iona

A beautiful still morning at Craignure: but looking across the Sound of Mull, the waterfalls on Morvern’s cliffs were being blown back up in veils of spray…. and high swirls of cirrus also spelt out strong winds from the west. A coach was waiting to whisk us away across the island of Mull, under wooded cliffs, past the Lochdon post office (a tiny hut in someone’s garden) through dark spruce forestry plantations, up over the bare green slopes of Beinn Talaidh (Hill of the Lullaby) and down to the Atlantic fjord of Loch Scridain. Here whitecaps were already ruffling the water and jostling the black buoys of the mussel farms: will the ferry cross to Iona? We hugged the saffron shores of the loch where oystercatchers stabbed and gaunt grey herons stood on sentry duty, over humpback bridges and staccato cattle grids, swinging and swooping down the sinuous single track road to Iona. All the while, Steve, our blonde driver, kept up a colorful narration, a saga of Vikings, volcanoes, crofters and kings, teasing us with tales of the hapless and the heroic, all woven together with his own sardonic humor. He mocked the “tartan theme park” of Scottish tourism, and wove instead his own rich tapestry of life on this diverse island, the perfect script for a dramatic coach ride.

Nicely judged too, for we reached the Fionnphort ferry with just 5 minutes to spare. A pitching passage across the Sound was accompanied by diving gannets and strings of passing razorbills as the mystical isle of Iona drew near. Scrambling ashore up the wave-washed slip we joined the many thousands of pilgrims who have made this journey over the centuries; under the inspired teachings of St. Columba in the sixth century, this tiny island became a crucible for Christianity which spread across to England and out into Europe. Ultimately it even tamed the very Vikings who terrorized the Abbey in the 8th and 9th centuries: their reformed leaders united with the Gaels of Argyll to found the powerful dynasty “Lords of the Isles”. So it was that in the 12th century an abbey dedicated to St. Columba was built here, plus a nunnery to acknowledge the devotion of Christian women, and a tiny chapel to St. Oran, a hermit already here when St. Columba’s tiny curragh arrived from Ireland in 563 AD. Nowhere on the island epitomizes the power of devotion more than this tiny stone paddock of St. Oran. The simple Norman chapel, with swallows nesting on its bare beams, the driftwood cross, and outside the countless tombstones weathered to anonymity by the wild Atlantic weather. Here it is said 48 Scottish, 8 Norse and 4 Irish kings are buried. On the wall outside, a tiny ivy-leaved toadflax plant symbolizes the dogged optimism of St. Oran: a seed which alights on the barren granite and sandstone of the west coast, battered by rain and lashed by gales, may yet take root and spread across an unforgiving landscape. You may be stranded between a rock and a hard place, but hope springs eternal…

Our faith renewed, we took the winding road back to the outside world, but this time with new eyes; and sure enough, a string of wonders finished the day: a soaring golden eagle left its lofty crag, a red deer stag grazed among bracken, an otter dove for crabs in Craignure bay and a final rainbow blazed over Tobermory, a safe haven from the winds of the west.