A Trip to Tobermory

A damp start to the day, and the need to visit our bank to ask when the chief executive was going to resign, took us across to Tobermory, a 35-minute trip that costs us nothing because of the generosity of the Scottish Parliament towards its old age pensioners.  In fact, when The Diary is very old and has nothing else to do, it's going to catch the 8.00am to Tobermory each day and sit on the ferry, where it's warm, there's an interesting and constantly changing view, and the staff are always friendly, until it's thrown off the last sailing at 6.35pm.

Tobermory is a twee little town nestling round a wooded bay.  It has all the shops you would expect of a tourist honeypot - like a soap shop, a pottery shop and a toy shop - but it also has some really interesting ones, like a book shop which does fishing tackle, and Brown's Hardware which is the sort of real old hardware shop that has died in most high streets.  Brown's also sells whisky.  The only supermarket is the Co-op, which would be more than adequate if only there was enough room for shoppers to move around the aisles.

When we've exhausted the joys of Tobermory shopping we retire to the Western Isles Hotel - at top left in the picture - which is very welcoming and has a fine conservatory with a superb view right across the harbour.

In The Diary's humble opinion, one of the country's best Scotch whiskies is Tobermory single malt, the 10-year old being such a light dram that it goes well with breakfast.  However, the price of the product has risen by 50% in the last couple of years because Scotch is becoming so popular in places like China and India.  Perhaps the Scottish Parliament could also subsidise purchases of whisky for us deserving old age pensioners out of the £4.2 billion the export trade is worth to the country.

If Tobermory seems a sleepy little place, it doesn't lack excitement.  It's home to a very busy RNLI lifeboat and, as we left on the one o'clock ferry, the Coastguard, ambulance and police were in attendance at the slipway: someone had fallen down a cliff on the path to Tobermory lighthouse.