Traffic

A gentle, grey day today, with only one brief shower of rain. The photo looks down the Sound of Mull towards Tobermory lighthouse and the distant hills of Mull, with Calmac's ferry Loch Linnhe, back on duty for the Kilchoan-Tobermory run, approaching Tobermory Bay. The extended summer timetable starts today, but Sunday sailings don't begin until May.

The scallop boat Pegasus, registration OB216, came out of Tobermory early, her divers searching for scallops close under the Ormsaigbeg cliffs.

Meanwhile, ducks continue to arrive, this fine pair of Shelduck making themselves at home in the pond just below The Ferry Stores. They've spent the winter in the Heligoland Bight, off northwest Germany, moulting. It seems a cold place to go to shed your feathers.

If there was plenty of traffic on the water, it wasn't moving down Kilchoan's roads. They're tarmacking what might be called our High Street, from The Ferry Stores to the cattle grid by the Mingary turn. One of the joys of our roads is that there are no alternative routes, so drivers sit and wait for them to finish a stretch. As a result, the shop was rather quiet this morning, and the mail and papers were late.

The resurfacing is badly needed after the frosts of this winter, and they're doing a proper job of it, with two layers going down. It looks good - so good that somebody is bound to come along and dig it all up again.