Islay and Jura part 4

On our last full day in Islay we took advice from the owners of our hotel and headed to Machir Bay and Saligo Bay, on the west side of the island.

Machir Bay

The beach at Machir Bay is flatter and longer, but some very shallow pools of water on the sand provided amazing reflections of the blue sky and clouds. On the path down to the beach, there's a profusion of beautiful yellow, purple, blue and white wild flowers. We chatted to the owners of some camper vans and a man, walking three dogs, who has been coming back to Islay on holiday for over 20 years.

Saligo Bay

Saligo Bay is said to be the most beautiful beach in Islay and its big dark rocks and water pools look dramatic against the light sand. I'm sure it's especially good at sunset or sunrise. You have to walk through part of a farm to get to the beach, so we had to be careful not to worry the sheep - although most had bagged a spot on the old gun emplacements to watch us from on high.

 

Loch Gruinart Nature Reserve

We then went to the Loch Gruinart Nature Reserve where we hid in the... hide, and saw a young deer, some swans and a few herons. They've got a great exhibition and lots of information about how you can help wildlife charities. I seem to remember that some of their birds' nests were featured on Springwatch (or Autumnwatch?). It's a lovely peaceful place to rest for an hour or more.

 

(Best to view pics at original size)

Distilleries

We had a quick scoot round the distilleries in the south-east (Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg) to get photos, and had a look at Bowmore's famous round church.

  

Bye to Islay

After another lovely meal at an taigh-osda, we had a great night's sleep and caught the early ferry back to the mainland. Before we left Port Ellen, we were lucky enough to see a seal getting hand-fed by a fisherman - it was a brilliant way to finish the holiday. We'll be back!

  

Comments

[Armin]

Oh, so those pictures are yours! On Wednesday I blogged about the pictures of the seal getting a fish:

http://www.islayblog.com/2008entries/20080909-seal.shtml

The world is small...

[Roaming Around]

Yes, we were delighted to see the seal, as you can probably tell :-). Thanks for blogging it!

[Peter Kesel]

Wow! it's looking very nice & beautiful. Thanks for information.

[hid kit]

Nice picture. I love this.

[Nathanael]

I rarely meet such interesting ideas! Not long ago I found an interesting documentary by accident at one rapidshare search engine ( http://www.filecatch.com/trends/fr/24-09-2010.html ) and watched it with interest. You never know where you find and where you lose...