Tuition and Tiree

I paid my tuition today.  All 12,200 pounds of it.  I am now officially committed.

And now, my trip to Tiree last week!  I was a good little journal-writer while I was gone, so I'm just going to transcribe it all here, with some minor edits.  Enjoy!

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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

After an early-morning train ride to Glasgow and a short ride in a tiny plane, I arrived on the Isle of Tiree.  The airport is tiny - basically just a large-ish room with a little conveyor belt to one side for the luggage (and it doesn't even convey anything - the baggage handlers just shove it through from the outside).  And there's absolutely nothing around it - just fields, the ocean, and a little "Rural Centre" and cafe up the road.  I had my phone out and was about to call Tiree's Ring N Ride service when a random guy named Ivan offered me a lift.  He had a big fluffy white dog in the backseat which panted the whole time.

I'm at the Millhouse Hostel, in Cornaig, on the north side of the island.  It was completely deserted when I got there, but the owner, Judith, had left me a note saying where my room was and to make myself at home.  I accordingly stashed my stuff in the 6-bed dorm where I'm staying for the next 3 nights (3 beds including mine appear to be occupied), and set off in search of a phone signal and food.

I found a phone signal just a little down the road from the hostel.  Food was a more arduous quest.  There appear to be no grocery stores or restaurants in Cornaig, although I walked around a bit looking for one.  This included a foray possibly onto some cattle farmer's property, at which point I discovered that there is nothing more disconcerting than having about ten cows all staring at you strangely.

Stymied by the lack of eating facilities in Cornaig, I resolved to walk the 2 miles east to Balephetrish and try my luck there.  It's a full 5 miles to Scarinish, the main town on Tiree (and also the ferry port), and I wondered whether most of the island's facilities might be there.  Tiree is 12 miles long and 3 miles wide and there are villages all over, but for all I know, everyone drives to Scarinish to go shopping.  I had to make way for quite a lot of cars on the one-track roads, and got stared at by many more cows and a few sheep along the way.

I was maybe a mile down the road to Balephetrish when I came to a T-intersection with a road running off to the right (south), and a sign by it directing me to a cafe.  I decided that rather than take my chances on a place that might have food, I'd go where there was definitely food.

This was a mistake, because the cafe advertised is in fact the Cobbled Cow, which is the cafe attached to the Rural Centre, which is next to the airport.  So I ended up walking nearly the entire width of the island to get here.  FML.  But perhaps not such a mistake, because it's a very nice cafe, and serves breakfast all day.  I just had a full Scottish breakfast, and there are also some very yummy-looking cakes...

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Friday, October 14, 2011

I did have a piece of the Cobbled Cow's raspberry sponge cake, and it was quite tasty.  Just as I got up to leave at the end of my meal, who should turn up but Ivan, the guy who gave me a lift from the airport.  He asked incredulously whether I had walked there and how I was getting back, and suggested that if I couldn't get ahold of the Ring N Ride, that I "have a hitch."

This is how I came to be standing on the side of the road from Crossapol to Balephetrish with my thumb out on a Wednesday afternoon.  A father with two kids and a dog (all holidaying from Fife) picked me up and dropped me off at my hostel without incident.  Add hitchhiking to my list of firsts!

Besides me, there were seven other people staying at the hostel when I arrived: a Swiss guy named Thomas, a German girl named Ulrike, and a family of five from Aberdeenshire - Neil, Tessa, and their kids Andrew (age 16), Ian (14), and Graham (11).  We all congregated together over dinner and chatted a lot.  The Scottish family were there taking windsurfing lessons, Ulrike goes to Tiree regularly to surf, and Thomas, like me, was there just because.

Yesterday, I rented a bike and rode to the Co-Op in Scarinish, which is in fact one of only two grocery stores on Tiree.  The other is an independent place in Crossapol.  Scarinish is 5 miles from Cornaig.  The first two miles were relatively easy going, but then the wind strengthened and blew at me at me the rest of the way.  I had to walk the bike quite a bit, because I just couldn't pedal against it.  And then when I had completed my food shopping and was ready to ride back, the wind swung around blew at me all the way home.  Plus there was another reason for my difficulties - the bike seat was slowly and steadily sinking.  But I got my groceries and all was well, except for my saddle-soreness.

In the afternoon, I studied a bit at the hostel, and also read a book called Your Royal Hostage by Antonia Fraser.  I'm about halfway through it now - we'll see if I can finish it before I leave tomorrow.  At a little before 4pm, I walked the 45 minutes to Ballavulin to watch the Tiree Wave Classic.  The competition itself was over for the day, but there were still windsurfers out on the water, as well as surfers and body-boarders.  Everyone from the hostel with the exception of Thomas eventually showed up as well.  The sun had been out for most of the afternoon, and we got a proper sunset.

Everyone left this morning except for me and Ulrike.  We had a bit of a lazy morning, because it was incredibly rainy and windy outside.  Tiree is quite flat, which means that weather tends to blow over quickly.  But this also means that gale-force winds can kick up.  The sun came out at about 11:00, and I left at about noon for the Cobbled Cow again (with a stop-off at a little souvenir shop called Beachcomber Crafts), which is where I am now.  I had a bowl of vegetable soup and a haggis roll, both of which were amazing.

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Thus end my journal entries.  The strong southerly wind blew me all the way back to Cornaig - hardly had to pedal.  I took a little break, and then biked back to Ballavulin to watch some more watersports.  By the time I got there, it was clear that the weather was about to turn, to I only hung out for about 20-25 minutes before biking back.  Once again, I managed to get the wind behind me, which was fortunate because it started raining again as I was biking back, and I was wet through by the time I got back to Cornaig.  Other guests had arrived for the evening - four 20- and 30-something Scots, once again from Aberdeenshire, and a family of 3 of indeterminate nationality, all visiting Tiree for the windsurfing.  Ulrike and I played a round of Scrabble with two of the Scots after dinner.

Ulrike and I both left on Saturday, and rode the ferry and the train together as far as Glasgow.  The ferry journey from Tiree to Oban (calling at the Isle of Coll on the way) is nearly four hours long, and I passed the time by looking at the scenery, eating in the ferry cafe, and napping.  We had about an hour in Oban before catching the train to Glasgow, so I grabbed a takeaway dinner of scampi and chips for the train.

The train ride from Oban to Glasgow is one of the most scenic in in Britain - second only to the other branch of the West Highland Line, from Mallaig to Glasgow.  Indeed, it's made the top of people's most scenic in the entire world lists.  It goes through the southern part of the Western Highlands and the prettiest parts of Argyll, taking three hours.  It was cloudy and misty most of the way, which just made everything look more mystical and enchanting.

Ulrike and I parted ways in Glasgow, and I took the train to Edinburgh on my own, getting in at about 8:30pm, having left Tiree at about 11:00 that morning.