Oban; Saturday, 28 May, 2011

Up early for a quick breakfast before checking out of the hotel and heading down to Queen Street station to catch my train to Oban. I arrived at the station with about 30 minutes to spare, which in the end proved to be a sensible decision as the train was heaving.

It’s a long, but stunning journey up through the southern highlands over to Oban and the four hours or so passed by with one amazing vista after another coming past the window. On arriving at Oban I dropped my luggage off in the lockers at the station and headed out into town to have a look around.

First stop after a bit of a wander was the Distillery to book myself on the next tour, which wasn’t for another 30 minutes, so I walked down to the local tour agents to book on a tour of Mull, Staffa and Iona for the following day, before heading back to the Distillery for the tour.

From the distillery I walked back to the station to pick up the City Sightseeing tour. The bus arrived 20 minutes before the tour was due to start and slowly started to fill up. 14:00, the departure time came and the driver went to switch the engine on, but was met with the sound of a very flat battery. He made several attempts to get the bus working before a mechanic turned up to try and get it started, which he did, for a short while before the engine once again died. So instead of getting a 2 ½ hour tour of Oban instead I got a warm enclosed top deck of a bus for 40 minutes in which to sit out a massive belt of rain that suddenly hit.

With the rain cleared and the bus officially declared broken, I headed back to the station to pick up my bags and walk over to my hotel to checkin, dropped my stuff off and then headed back into town to visit McCaigs tower.

Having taken in the views I then headed down to the harbour to go on an evening cruise around the islands out to Mull and back. On the way out I stood up on deck and took in the views, including a spectacular rainbow over the stern of the ship, on the way back the weather closed in fast and I took shelter in the restaurant taking the opportunity to also have dinner.

By the time we finally got back into port (and we were delayed somewhat by the strong head winds and choppy seas) it was starting to get dark so I walked back along the prom to the hotel to get an early nights sleep.