Long John Silver eat your heart out

FRIDAY - Six find treasure

What a WONDERFUL finale today turned out to be.

Last breakfast round the huge table, all so sad to be at the end of this amazing week and wondering how to spend this final day of sunshine.


Then Gillian suddenly dropped in the golden ticket suggestion - we might like Erraid.  An island on the tip of the Ross of Mull accessible over the sands at low tide.  We could park in her mate John's field and very few people go there . . . . .


So, it was over to the Fionnphort ferry cafe for more butties from Teresa then off along the single track road over beautiful open moorland with the Sound of Iona blue on one side and hills gently rolling on the other.  Past the sandy inlet where we'd seen the mountain hares with Bryan and onward and upward to the end of the farm track at Fidden.


Then it was just a hop, skip and a jump (for joy) onto the most amazing incredible fantastic beach ever!

lunar patterns in the sand 

And is if that wasn't enough, it turned out the whole island was ours for the day.

Didn't see another living soul.

Wondered far and wide across the granite strewn landscape with absolutely no footpaths.  Huge erratically dumped white boulders, steep drops high above rocky bays, incredible views across the deeper blues of the Atlantic and white beaches below bordered with basalt columns.

Sang at the top of our voices as we marched along - got lost loads, squelched in peaty bogs, scrunched through heather, clambered up rocks and got blown to bits by gusty sea breezes.

Even found ancient hut circles.

And all around the horizon loads of little islands dotted out to America.  Absolute bliss

 After a couple of hours we headed back to the bay we'd arrived at but it took some finding

and found this incredible rocky cove on the virgin sand to have our picnic.

Paradise . . . that was until the tide came in around us and we had to up-butties and hop to safety


past the amazing shipwreck

And that was when we spied the gigantic burrows . . .

Here is Miss Marple investigating

and footprints too

and then, walking back up to the farm, our first sign that humans had ventured here before us 

or was he the guy from the giant burrow . . . he retained his right to remain silent so we shall never know - but he was cute!  The jury is currently still out on the footprints, but we're voting for either otters or mountain hare.  Votes in the comments box at the bottom please.


We joked as we drove back that we'd found our own Treasure Island - a Robert Louis Stevenson / Enid Blyton / Famous Five / Secret Seven sort of a day.

but wait to hear this . . . .


Later, back at Ardness House, it was a quick google to bring up the amazing discovery that it really was Treasure Island!!!!!  Robert Louis Stevenson's father was a lighthouse builder and he was building the Dubh Artach lighthouse off Erraid between 1867 and 1872 when our Robert was just a young lad.  So of course, Robert spent visits with his family on Erraid, loving the landscape and the huge granite rocks and wandering around the island fervently wishing he could be a writer and not a builder of lighthouses, so the story goes.

He subsequently used Erraid as a backdrop to part of his novel Kidnapped, where the hero, David Balfour is shipwrecked on the Torran Rocks and washed ashore and in Treasure Island, Jack Hawkin's chart bears a resemblance to Erraid. 

So basically, when he wrote Treasure Island and Kidnapped he based chunks of them in Erraid.  Isn't that just incredible.


I'm probably boring you rigid with this - cos I kept on reading I was so amazed.  But to keep it short I'll just put in some webpages you can click and read if you feel the urge:

more about Erraid  more about Treasure Island - - - and even more

and if you really want a detailed piece of research on the history or Erraid, try here.


And Andrew Motion has just published his sequel to Treasure Island (read reveiw here) 

http://www.kellscraft.com/maptreasisle.JPG

So that was our most wonderful final day on Mull and, for our last supper, more amazing fresh mussels, copious wine, lots of laughs and final hugs from Gillian, who was off to the market at 5am the next morning selling calves in Oban.

There'll be a final report on our journey home tomorrow if you have the energy to read more then click here

oh and yes, as Colombo would say, just one more thing . . .

this is going to sound so soft and corny - but we did find real treasure.  It was in each other's wonderful company and friendship in one amazing week in May.

the good doctor

As we speak I am coming to the end of writing up our Wednesday adventures on Mull and Ulva.  But, having trouble cramming everything in, have decided to dash off this addendum on Doctor Johnson and James Boswell's jaunt to the Western Isles rather than putting it all in the same blog post.

I'd been reading snippets of their journals which I found online (click below to read):

Johnson's account

Boswell's account

just from the part where they were coming to Mull from the Isle of Coll (Katie Morag's home, if you were paying attention to Tuesday's blog!).

Yale University Press book cover

Johnson says, "After having listened for some days to the tempest, and wandered about the Island till our curiosity was satisfied, we began to think about our departure. To leave Coll in October was not very easy. We however found a sloop which lay on the coast to carry kelp; and for a price which we thought levied upon our necessities, the master agreed to carry us to Mull".

Doesn't this make you realise how adventurous travel was back in 1775.

"As we were to catch the first favourable breath, we spent the night not very elegantly nor pleasantly in the vessel, and were landed next day at Tobor Morar, a port in Mull"

The roads would have been virtually non-existant.  They spent some time with friends then decided to travel to Iona by horse, by way of Inch Kenneth for a night.

"This was a day of inconvenience, for the country is very rough, and my horse was but little. We travelled many hours through a tract, black and barren. . . . . . . .   We travelled diligently enough, but found the country, for road there was none, very difficult to pass".

Boswell adds,  "We had a very hard journey to-day. I had no bridle for my sheltie, but only a halter; and Joseph rode without a saddle. At one place, a loch having swelled over the road, we were obliged to plunge through pretty deep water. Dr Johnson observed, how helpless a man would be, were he travelling here alone, and should meet with any accident; and said, 'he longed to get to a country of saddles and bridles'."

from, http://www.greatclanross.org/icons5.html

And by the time they got to the coast it was very late at night, the ferry to Inch Kenneth had gone and a gentleman who could have put them up was ill so they had nowhere to stay and no-one to ask at that late hour, although they could see Ulva across the straits.  However, as fate would have it . . .

Johnson says, "While we stood deliberating, we were happily espied from an Irish ship, that lay at anchor in the strait. The master saw that we wanted a passage, and with great civility sent us his boat, which quickly conveyed us to Ulva, where we were very liberally entertained by Mr. Macquarry."

and this will be Lachlan Macquarrie who went on to become Governor of New South Wales.  He left Ulva in debt in 1777 due in part to his over generous nature!   So Johnson and Boswell only just managed to enjoy his hospitality - read all about it here:

http://www.jimandellen.org/J&BForever.html

and so the journals go on - quite fastinating if you fancy dipping in.

and you'll see that later on our Wednesday travels in 2012 (click here) we took the little ferry across to the very Isle of Ulva - so that was quite an amazing feeling!!

(If you've come to this page from our 2013 holiday on Mull, then please click here to return).

London snow and soup

Sit down with a nice hot cuppa - this is going to be a long one!  
As usual we crammed in loads of brilliant stuff on our 2 day trip to, as our 'train manager' on the 09:27 from Sheffield declared as we rolled into St Pancras, "one of the greatest cities of the world".

FRIDAY


I totally agree with this lone reviewer on Albertini's in Chalton Street - the best welcome into the capital you would wish to have and our frequent first port of call after landing in St Pancras.   Never fail to be greeted with a warm welcome, amazing fresh food and brill Italian coffee.

This time though, my main diet had to be soup - avid readers of this blog will remember I have a tooth about to drop out and am trying to hang on in there til my appointment next week.  Thankfully Albertini's carrot soup was amazing and, fortified, we ventured back towards the tube to get over to the Hoxton to check in (Click here for my Hox review).

Freezing temperatures (daytime barely got above zero) but bright winter sunshine and a great walk back to King Cross - marvelling at the snow still outside the British Library!

Loved this quote outside the British Libray so, nice tune for you below . . . . .

Probably need a bit of an explantion here - I always loved this song and I always thought it was about London.  It's so cheerful and uplifting and conjures up bright city mornings.  I since learned that it was about her time in the Chelsea Hotel, New York.  But never mind!!! It will always be one of my joyful London anthems!!!  And I was walking round humming this under my double wrapped scarf.

Back on the streets after dumping out cases, we headed to Angel and the streets around City University

amazing old butchers

interesting housing in Rawstorne Street, turns out to be old brewers' buildings

The famous theatre pub

It being the 200th anniversary of Dicken's birth we just had to hunt down the recently discovered house where Dickens lived between the ages of 17 and 20, so we headed over to Fitzrovia.

Armed with a curled up copy of this article (click here to read) cut from last week's paper - we located Cleveland Street - sheltering right below the Post Office Tower.

No - this wasn't where Charlie resided, but loved the idea of sunning on this roof garden with that amazing garden sculpture!!

but this was!  No 22 Cleveland Street, formally known as 10 Norfolk Street, where Dickens had his modest lodgings, just a few doors away from .......

The workhouse that inspired the writing of Oliver Twist

The Cleveland Street workhouse, most recently the Middlesex Hospital, is now under threat of demolition.  This is most certainly the workhouse that inspired Dickens to write Oliver Twist, if you read the article above.   There's also more of our anniversary homage to Dickens in Kent last June - read here

Dicken's lodgings again, 2nd in the row

Leaving here, we availed ourselves of some delicious Portugese custard tarts - just THE most delicious things to have with a coffee and yet we don't get them up in Sheffield.  This was the first little deli we first tasted them at several years ago, and we managed to snaffle the last two on Friday!!  So get yourselves down to Salumeria Dino in Charlotte Place, a little gennel just off Goodge Street.

outside Dino's

further down Charlotte Place, Dino's up on the right and another lovely looking cafe too, closer to this photo on the right.

onwards to Soho and a saunter down Mearde Street, after reading about it in a great little London blog I've been following.  Some pics taken around Soho:

and this place looked even more amazing inside, like an Aladdin's cave

then, it being so very cold, we didn't need an excuse for a coffee and another Portugese tart in Bar Italia - imortalised by Jarvis Cocker, listen to Bar Italia on the Different Class album

Bar Italia

Next we got on the number 24 bus at Cambridge Circus:

This has got to be one of the best cheap rides in London.  It was just getting dark by this time and we came round the corner of the National Galleries to a floodlit Trafalgar Square, the Strand to the left and Admiralty Arch to the right (glimpse up the Mall in this the Queen's diamond jubilee year). Then onwards up Whitehall past Horseguards's Parade, the Cenotaph, Downing Street, Big Ben, Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament then rounded the corner and alighted at Westminster Abbey for a cold brisk walk through the Georgian terraces to our Mozart concert at St John's Smith Square by the Morley Chamber Orchestra.


SATURDAY

I have been reading this book below, written in 1917, and chapter one is about William Blake.  Brilliantly written and just fastinating to realise Blake wandered London on foot studiously and barely left the city.  I think I'll have an 'in Blake's footsteps' trip one day and check out all the addresses he lived at mentioned in the book:

and (wow!) I've found the book to read free online here - try Chapter One on Blake - it's brilliant.

Our Saturday was very much an East London day.  And lo and behind I just found this on Youtube, by Paul Howard and Jo Clack.  It follows some of our route later in the day round the back of Whitechapel:

The day dawned sunny and again freezing, but the blue skies were fantastic against the London skyline.  First stop was a stroll down Bethnal Green Road and past this little gem of a Szechuan restuarant which we must visit next time - review here.

amazing Szechuan restaurant

blue skies at Bethnal Green

aim of the walk to reach the legendery Pellici's for brunch - just read this web page on Classic Cafes and you'll end up with a lifetime quest to eat in brilliant old joints like this.

Happy after the brunch and a half!

passed the famous pie and mash shop

and onwards up to the wonderful Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood for a nostalgic dabble with Fisher Price and Dinky.  I even found an Emergency Ward 10 nurses outfit - oh happy days!!!

we've run out of cakes!!!!

Next we walked over to Whitechapel through Tower Hamlets and found the tiny hidden Jewish Cemetry on Brady Street - just tucked behind the high rise flats.  Unfortunately we could only peep through the railings as it's only open to the public by prior request.

Turns out Nathan Mayer Rothschild is buried here.  Interesting article about the history of the cemetery to read here.  To save the cemetery from compulsory development, an heir of Rothschild was buried here in 1990, thus securing the cemetery in tact until at least 2090.

New and Old - the old London Hospital with the clock and the new mega building at the back - and what is this Dallas???

perfect for renovation!

beautiful fruit on Whitechapel Road

and on to the wonderful Whitechapel Gallery for culture, cuppas and cakes.

And finally, before our 9 o'clock train back to Sheffield, we went in search of Little Venice.  It was so very very cold as night fell but we ventured behind Paddington Station and down wooden boardwalks towards the canal.  Sadly we'd walked along the wrong side of the station so didn't get to Little Venice but were thrilled to find this lovely area of the Regent's Canal and, guess what, the canal was FROZEN!!  Just as impressive as the pics in the paper this weekend from Amsterdam!!  The tunnel of modern buildings in the second pic reminded me of our architecture boat tour in Chicago.  Also below is the Rolling Bridge I've just heard about which we didn't see but will try to return to.

looking to the left

and to the right

Back to Old Street to pick up the cases and a final delicious (butternut squash) soup at the Hoxton Grill  before heading over to St Pancras.

And we can't wait to return for, as the great Dr Samuel Johnson famously said to Boswell, "Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford".  Blake's sentiments entirely!!