Iona - a two sandwich walk

Iona is the cradle of Christianity in Scotland, and most visitors to the island are there for the history. The first time I went, that was me too. And it is stunning. The abbey (restored in the twentieth century and very much a living church) and the tiny 12^th century chapel of St Oran are both wonderful. If it’s your first trip, do that and ignore me, by all means.

But the very useful thing about having one obvious tourist attraction is that most people go there. For such a tiny island, Iona has some great hiking and even Easter week, it’s relatively quiet.  

Getting to Iona is special in its own right. Tourists are not allowed to take their car onto the island (there’s an exception for blue badges if you arrange it in advance with Argyle council). So you leave your car in the car park at Fionnhort – the free long stay is up the hill a bit from the port – and get on a foot passenger ferry, dodging waves if it’s choppy.

It’s a lot easier to feel like you’re walking in the footsteps of pilgrims when you’re actually walking, albeit up a concrete slip way rather than sideways out of a rowing boat.

Then we turned our backs on the Abbey and headed off south.

“Can we at least go to the gift shop?” the small ones asked.

“No. No wool for me, no toys, we’re walking today.”

Toilets? Yes, by the harbour.

Accessibility?  There are good roads for the first part of the walk, as far as the golf course, but after that it’s briefly steep and either sandy or boggy. You could make it as far as the end of the golf course for some lovely views, though.

Food? There’s an absolutely excellent seafood and chip stand, The Creel, at Fionphort harbour. There are cafes on the Iona side, but they aren’t quite as inspirational.

Head in the opposite direction from the Abbey, past the toilets and the wee café, and along the coast. There’s a good road that runs along the sea and turns inland past a corncrake sanctuary.

We didn’t see, or hear, any corncrakes. It’s too early in the season. But these very rare birds have a starring role in the film The Outrun starring Saoirse Ronan. This isn’t a film blog, but you do have to live with my digressions. It’s beautiful. It’s about a woman recovering from alcohol addiction, who returns from London to Orkney where her family live. It’s unflinching, and she isn’t always terribly likeable.  But the landscape and folklore of Orkney play an important role in the film and in her recovery. It also has some of the best music design in any film I’ve seen.

As far as I know, Iona’s corncrakes have no particular symbolic role in recovery.

Eventually, the road peters out at the end of a golf course come common ground. This isn’t a formal, stuffy course. It’s just a useful thing to do with some fields, and there are also some sheep.

Helpfully, there’s a full row of lovely benches for your first picnic of the trip.

You can walk down to the shore here. The beach is full of smooth pebbles of Iona marble, green and pink. They feel very odd, so smooth they’re almost glassy. From here you can also see a waterspout in a nearby cave.

After mooching about at the beach, and then insisting that the children emptied half a quarry’s worth of random stones from their pockets, we headed left towards St Columba’s bay.

“Oh look! Whitears!,” I enthused. Whitears are very pretty birds, about blackbird sized, which are guaranteed to utterly fail to impress your children.

The path then goes up a sandbank, over a rise and into a bog. Clearly, at some point, people have maintained the path. But Scottish winters are not good for anyone’s attempts to tame anything.

But it’s amazingly empty and wild feeling, for something that’s barely over an hour from a ferry terminal. How much over an hour?

“Iain, did you notice when we got off the ferry?”

“No. Why?”

“Neither did I. I’m trying to work out how long it will take to get back for the last crossing.”
“I’m sure we’re fine.”
“Are you actually sure we’re fine or are you saying ‘I’m sure we’re fine’ then when we get to the bay, planning to be all ‘right everyone we need to set a decent pace because we will miss the ferry and be stranded on Iona overnight’?”

“Stop fussing.”

The latter, then. Picture me, on the edge of a peat bog, trying to work out the time we got off the ferry based on the timestamps on my photos.

Sigh.

“Two hours with the picnic included. An hour and a half. The last ferry is two hours from now…”

And I am speaking to air, as the family have yomped off towards another bog.

Top tip, fellow walkers. Check these things.

At the edge of a beautiful view, I pointed out that we might be cutting it fine for the ferry.

“I’m calling it, husband. I do not want to have to sprint for a boat wearing hiking boots. I want so stroll back stuffing my face with shortbread.”
“The bay is only about…”
“Love, that’s at least 20 minutes on this terrain, so 40 minutes plus an hour and a bit back. I. Do. Not. Want. To. Sprint.”

Husband agreed that we had a fine view of the bay, and that maybe actually seeing it close up might be some extra birds and not much more.

So we turned back the way we came.

In navigation terms, there was one path there and we followed it back, and apart from a few bonus squelchy bits that the kids found it couldn’t have been a more relaxed walk. Which is what I wanted from it, and, if husband was honest, him too. We had time for another biscuit break too.

“Look! Oystercatchers!” Another attempt from me to engage the kids in talk that wasn’t about Minecraft.

“Mum, I understand why you like owls. I get why you get excited about eagles. But today, all you have seen are mid birds. Oystercatchers are mid. Why are you so into mid birds?”

Oystercatchers are not, for the record, mid. They look like they are wearing dinner jackets and wellies at all times. But Husband still thinks this is the best and funniest insult he has ever heard.

We got to the ferry with about 20 minutes to spare, after the shops had shut, much to the kids’ disgust.

All in all, the guidebook’s estimate of 2-3 hours was surprisingly accurate if you weren’t going to stop for two picnics.