Yesterday Debbie and i went on a five-hour whale watching tour around the Inner Hebrides. We took the train from Glasgow to Oban on Wednesday afternoon, stayed overnight in a B&B and then made our way twelve miles south to Balvicar on the Isle of Seil for half past nine on Thursday morning. You can click on the map at left for a better idea of where we went.
Oban is a touristy little seaside town with excellent fish & chips and numerous B&Bs. Debbie found us a great place to stay: Raniven Guest House. The woman who runs the place is exceptionally helpful, and our full English breakfast was delicious; i would definitely recommend it. I took a few pictures of Oban and its harbo(u)r, and you can see them on Flickr.
The whale watching tour was run by a company called Sealife Adventures. The skipper of the boat, David, was very enthusiastic, and his assistant Monica spent a lot of time telling us not only about the wildlife in the area but also the geological history of the Inner Hebrides. There were only twelve passengers on the trip including Debbie and myself, so we had plenty of room to move around the boat. Our fellow whale watchers were a teenage boy doing a project for school and a French family (parents, one set of grandparents, two daughters, and three nephews). The nephews only spoke French, and the grandparents spoke some English. The parents and their daughters, however, spoke English fluently, because they live in Manchester. It turned out that the father is a chief executive of some kind for the northern European division of Adidas. Their next holiday will be in Beijing for the Games.
We ended up being disappointed by the whales; they all kept well out of sight, but we were treated to some porpoise that came quite close to the boat. We also saw seals and loads of birds. We went through the famous Corryvreckan Whirlpool area, and even though the whirlpool wasn't fully formed the seas were very rough. No one got seasick though. It was a really fun trip even without the whales, and as Debbie said, we can be reasonably sure that we were near whales; we just didn't see them.
One thing we hadn't taken into account on this trip was that we would be covered with a thin film of salt by the time we set foot back on land. The first order of business was to get somewhere that we could wash our hands and comb our very windswept and salty hair. Debbie and i hitched a ride back to Oban with the teenager and his grandfather, a funny old man who told us all kinds of history of the area. Once we got back to town, we headed for the Oban Chocolate Company, which we had spotted on Wednesday evening. There we washed our hands and settled in for some excellent hot chocolate and apple shortcake. Thus provisioned we took a walk through Oban, stopped at the sweet shop so i could buy some rock (i also got giant Parma Violets and Scottish Tablet), and gorged ourselves on chips (Debbie had fish while i just had chips & gravy - yummy), before getting on the train back to Glasgow. A very satisfying trip indeed.
