Sunday 3rd August - Iona - The Sacred Island

When we woke up the weather had cleared! What a relief! After breakfast we met James and Julia and drove off down to the ferry with our booking and swapped them for tickets and joined the queue. The Caledonian-MacBrayne ferry, when it came in, was huge!

This video lasts about 60 seconds:

It was an easy process to drive on and then we were off! The weather was perfect, the sea was calm and the boat hardly moved.

Mull from the ferry

We sailed passed Duart Castle on a headland jutting out into the sea - impressive. Seat of Clan McClean I think.

Castle Duart

Craignure, the ferry landing on Mull, was only 45 minutes away.

Once off the ferry we had a good hour's drive along  Mull's one lane roads with passing bays every now and then.

Passing bay with its black & white marker post

The ferry landing was just a concrete ramp down into the sea and the ferry although smaller than the Mull ferry was still able to take 3 or 4 of the Islanders' vehicles.

Iona ferry coming in to Mull

During the 10 minutes it took to get across we could see the abbey as we approached and the little village along the waterfront.

The abbey from the ferry

It all looked beautiful in the sunshine.

Our first mission was to find lunch which we had in a little restaurant right down by the water - just like Maketu - with the sound of the sea right beside us!

Lunch on Iona

Mary-Ann couldn't wait to get down to the silver sand with Julia and get her feet wet!

The clear sea water of Iona

Julia and Mary-Ann in the sea

I left my shadow on the rocks

After that we walked up the hill to the Abbey grounds. I love all those old stone buildings.

Mull house by the ferry

Iona house

First we came across a little St. Oran's chapel with the tombstones of old Kings of the Islands.

St. Oran's chapel

The front of the chapel

The doorway

Old tombstone of an Island King

Then we progressed to the abbey itself , built in 563AD by St. Columba from Ireland - 1400 years old!

Iona Abbey

The ticket office had a turf roof

Turf roof

Outside there was this gigantic cross that had been there for 1000 years in the same spot!

The Iona Cross

The inside was really quite large and grand.

The choir

The Nave

The timber roof

St. Patrick window

Inside the abbey itself were the cloisters and this unusual sculpture

James and Julia in the cloisters

The sculpture

It suffered during the Reformation just like all the other abbeys, but it is still standing and used today!

One of its major claims to fame is that this where "The Book of Kells" was written.

The Book of Kells (Trinity College Dublin MS 58) is celebrated for its lavish decoration. The manuscript contains the four Gospels in Latin based on a Vulgate text, written on vellum (prepared calfskin), in a bold and expert version of the script known as "insular majuscule".

The place of origin of the Book of Kells is generally attributed to the scriptorium of the monastery founded around 561 by St Colum Cille on Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland. In 806, following a Viking raid on the island which left 68 of the community dead, the Columban monks took refuge in a new monastery at Kells, County Meath. It must have been close to the year 800 that the Book of Kells was written, although there is no way of knowing if the book was produced wholly at Iona or at Kells, or partially at each location.

It has been on display in the Old Library at Trinity College Dublin from the mid 19th century, and attracts over 500,000 visitors a year. Since 1953 it has been bound in four volumes. Two volumes are on public view, one opened to display a major decorated page, and one to show two pages of script. The volumes are changed at regular intervals.

The abbey has a message for travellers:

At about 3:00pm we walked back to the ferry and I spotted this beautiful vegetable garden at the back of the Iona hotel

Boarding the ferry back to Mull

Coming into Mull

and the long drive back to Craignure and the ferry back to Oban. On the way I spotted this beautiful vegetable garden at the back of the hotel and those lovely houses.

The Iona vegetable garden

On the way we saw some "heilant coos" just by the roadside

Heilant coo and calf

and this old stone bridge

Old stone bridge

Once back to Oban we had a whisky at the Craignure Inn.

For the evening in Oban we had dinner in the Oban Steak House - not quite as grand as the restaurant the previous night, but nice. I has a haggis and black pudding starter!

Haggis and black pudding