Day 41: Iona to Ben More, Mull

Virtual Walk: Scotland 2021

14th February 2021: 99.77km walked today taking the total to 4219.01/8868km. 13.5% of 98 entries submitting 739.05km.

We continue our journey on Mull today, visiting the iconic Island of Iona with its beautiful Abbey before retracing our steps back onto Mull to venture along the wild Ardmeanach Peninsula’s coastline before climbing Ben More. Enjoy your visit!

Route 14: Isle of Mull

We re-join the road for 8 kilometres through the Ross of Mull, passing Loch Pottie, ‘Loch Poit na h-l’, (no potty humour please lol) arriving at Fionnphort to wait for the ferry to Iona. It is a small crossing on the Sound of Iona and takes us just 10 minutes. It is worth noting if you plan to return sometime, that cars are not permitted on Iona. It has had a Prohibition of Vehicles Order since 1978 to preserve the island environment.

Iona, ‘Chalium Chille’ or ‘I’, has a lot of history for such a small island. The land, 2 kilometres wide by 6 kilometres long, is much like the rest of the islands; machair, rocky, with sandy and pebble beaches. A portion of the land is owned by the Iona Cathedral Trust while the remainder, which was bought by Sir Hugh Fraser in 1979 from the Duke of Argyll, was donated to the National Trust for Scotland. The historic monuments are cared for by Historic Environment Scotland and there is an active community on the island, the Iona Community (more about them in a moment). You can stay on the island to walk, explore the beaches and bays, fish, golf, experience some retreat-style activities and/or take a trip to Staffa. However, most people come for a short visit to see the Abbey and its religious history.

St Columba came to Iona in 563AD as an exile from Ireland with 12 other monks. He founded the Abbey and set about his mission work of taking Christianity to the Picts. It became renowned as a centre of learning, healing and hospitality and was well established at the time of Columba’s death. Hence it is called the ‘Cradle of Celtic Christianity’. The monks continued until the Vikings raided in 802AD. Columba's remains were then removed to Dunkeld and the Book of Kells, written or started in Iona at the end of the 8th century, was taken back to Ireland. The centre for Scottish Christianity then moved to St Andrews. Iona sat unused until c1203 when a Benedictine Abbey was founded by the Norse. This thrived until the Scottish Reformation in 1560 when monastic life ended in Scotland.

A new chapter of life was breathed into Iona during the early 20th century, with the formation of the Iona Cathedral Trust followed in 1938 by the Iona Community. Founded by George MacLeod, he brought ministers and craftsmen to the island, restoring the Abbey building. This Community continues today, leading daily worship in the Abbey.

Alighting the ferry onto Martyr’s Bay, we walk up Baile Mor, ‘big town’, to the nunnery ruins, established here in c1208. The ruins dating from the 14th century are the best-preserved example of a medieval nunnery in Scotland. As we wander further up the main street, we pass a Celtic cross at the side of the road known as MacLean’s Cross. It sits beside this ancient road Sràid nan Marbh, ‘street of the dead’, along which the kings and chiefs would have been brought to the Abbey from the harbour for burial. The cross was placed here by a Clan Chief of MacLean in the 1400s and a fine example of that period.

Just along the road the 12th century St Oran’s Chapel, ‘Reilig Odhrain’ and its graveyard, known as the ‘Graveyard of the Kings’. There are thought to be 48 Scottish Kings buried here along with 8 Norse Kings, 4 Kings of Ireland and several chiefs of powerful clans. Macbeth is buried here, King of Scotland from 1040-1057. He has become well-known thanks to a play written by William Shakespeare in 1606, although he was nothing like the character that was portrayed. He lies here with the man he killed to become king, Duncan I. It is still an active graveyard today; John Smith, former Labour Party Leader was buried here in 1994.

We walk into the Abbey grounds, sited next to the Sound of Iona, and we can see Mull behind the stone structure. The ‘street of the dead’ cobble road, dating back 1,000 years, approaches from the graveyard side in a dip leading to the front of a beautiful Celtic Cross, St Martin’s Cross. Carved from red granite in the 9th century, it is one of the finest examples to be found from that era, standing 16ft tall from its base. There is another cross nearer the building, St John’s Cross, which is a replica of an 8th-century cross, believed to have originated from Iona, whose pieces can be viewed in the Museum at the back of the Abbey. We wander about for a time to enjoy the Abbey, its colonnades and Museum before continuing north to ‘Dun I’, Hill of Iona (101m).

The Hill of Iona is the highest point on the island and an Iron Age fort stood at its peak between 100BC-200AD called ‘Dunbhuirg’. The terrain is uneven and boggy underfoot; you can tell something sat here at some time in the past. Near the summit is a pool known as the Well of Eternal Youth, ‘Tobar nah Aois’, associated with St Brigid of Ireland, who is said to have visited and blessed the spring. People say that washing your face here will ‘roll back the years’ or give healing to those seeking a fresh start in life.

A further couple of kilometres brings us to the northern point on the island, passing a lovely white sand beach to the west as we walk. It is called the ‘White Strand of the Monks’, in remembrance of a 10th-century massacre which occurred here when invading Vikings killed a number of the monks on the beach. Heading over the north point of the island we make our way down dunes onto the Strand of Seat Beach, ‘Traigh an t-Suidhe’. It's a great place if you collect pebbles, and there are a few bays and inlets as we go, to search for a few treasures for your collection. We wander over machair and rocky areas to arrive at a large area of machair near the ‘Bay of the Back of the Ocean’. It's a golf course, but don’t go looking for clubs just yet, as it's not a standard golf course. It’s free to play here - why? The course is on machair mown only by the resident cattle and sheep!

We continue to the south of the island, passing Loch Staoineig, which used to be the water source for Iona until the 1980s when a pipe was laid from Mull. At the southern point is St Columba Bay, the point at which St Columba came ashore in his coracle all those centuries ago. Over to the west, there is a wee hill called ‘Hill of the Back of Ireland’, said to be where Columba climbed the hill to check that he couldn’t see Ireland before settling here. The area isn’t easy to walk so we take care as we weave our way through rocks and bushes to the two beaches; to the east ‘Port a’ Churaich’, Port of the Coracle, where Columba is said to have landed, and to the west ‘Port an Fhir-Bhreige’, Port of the False Man. If we are lucky, we’ll find a ‘mermaid’s tear’ here: small pebbles of Iona marble. Legend has it that a mermaid fell in love with a monk and prayed that she would become human so she could marry him. Every time she fled back to the sea, realising that she was still a mermaid, her tears hit the ground and became these green Iona marble pebbles. If you find one pop it in your pocket, you will never die from drowning; they apparently have other properties too.

Returning to the top of the bay, a short walk finds us at an old marble quarry, only quarried for a short time in 1790 and in the early 20th century. The marble proved too difficult to transport out, so the men downed tools and it has eerily stayed just the way they left it. Taking care on the rugged path down, we take a peek at the old machinery sitting dormant, the majority of which sits rusting away, although some have been painted by the National Trust for Scotland to preserve them. Some rails and a hut were taken for use by the islanders; the hut was taken to be used as a home and is still in use today. The marble that made it out was used all over the world including St Columba Church, Pont Street in London, St Andrews Church, Jerusalem, and here in Iona. Back up at the top of the rugged path, we head back along the last stretch of the shore into the village to catch the ferry back to Mull.

From Fionnphort, we have a 26-kilometre walk back to Pennyghael. As we walk, I’ll tell you a little about Staffa. It can be reached from other places in the islands, but Iona has the advantage of being one of the shorter sails. The trips are a minimum of 3 hours long, have fantastic scenery of the islands as a backdrop, and the time frame includes an hour onshore to visit the cave and take photos of the puffins. Staffa is known for its dramatic rock formation, nesting seabirds, particularly puffins during their season, and Fingal’s Cave. On approach to Staffa, the rock formations of hexagonal basalt are impressive, rising starkly from the Atlantic. The caves are formed by a build-up of pressure in lava flow creating crevices, part of the same lava flow that created the Giant's Causeway, in County Antrim. Inside the main cave, the natural acoustics from its arched roof amplifies sound which earned it the name ‘Uamh-Binn’, the cave of melody. If you visit, you must have a singsong in the cave! This resulted in the island being inspirational to many over the centuries. The largest cave was named after an 18th-century poem by James MacPherson of that name, Fingal. In 1829 Felix Mendelssohn, the composer, visited the cave after which his work ‘Fingal’s Cave’, part of the Hebrides Overture, followed. This brought attention to the island and led to it becoming a major tourist destination, visited by Sir Walter Scott, Keats, Turner, Queen Victoria, William Wordsworth, Jules Verne, and Robert Louis Stevenson, to name but a few. Staffa is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, having been bought in 1986 by a New York advertising executive for his wife’s birthday and gifted to them.

Reaching Pennyghael, we continue to head east for 19 kilometres along Loch Scridain and around the Aird of Kinloch, a rocky outcrop which separates Loch Scridain to form another loch, Loch Beg. Following the north shore road, we are now on the Ardmeanach Peninsula, which winds northwest inland through a narrow valley, which splits the Peninsula into two. This is the middle peninsula (that's what its name means, in fact) on Mull’s west coast; the other peninsulas being Ross of Mull (south) and Aros Peninsula (north). The area is rugged and mountainous, towering above us on our route to Balnahard. To the east we see Am Beinnein (375m), Maol na Coille Moire (302m), Maol Mheadhonach (482m) and Coirc Bheinn (561m) and towering above them at the rear, Ben More (966m). To the west is largely uninhabited with a few settlements along the coastline. The award-winning Whitetail Gin began production here at the Tiroran Steadings in May 2019.

We turn off the main road for a time to walk along the south coast of the Peninsula to see MacCulloch's Fossil Tree. It’s a challenging, tricky coastal path, steep in places, along with sheep and goat tracks, leading us to an area called Burg (National Trust for Scotland owned since 1932). Here, we take the steep approach to the beach carefully as it's only accessible by an old iron ladder. We have synced our visit with the tides so we can get down onto the beach to see the fossil. Oh, and there are more seaweed-grazing goats! The now-basalt structure stands impressively embedded in towering cliffs, whilst the view from here is breathtaking of Mull, Treshnish Islands and Staffa. A great place to spot wildlife of the sea mammal variety and the white-tailed sea eagles.

We retrace our steps back to the main road and head north through the settlements of Balmeanach and Balnahard to the northern coast of the Peninsula where the road leads east along Loch na Keal, ‘Loch of the Cliffs’. Following this shore road from Balnahard for a time, a National Scenic Area, we see several small islands and skerries: Inchkenneth, Salaman Island, Eorsa while further away from us are Ulva, Gometra and Staffa. Only Ulva and Gometra are inhabited today, and even then, with a small number. The loch is surrounded by steep slopes and cliffs, one of which we’re about to scale: Ben More.

We reach the path we will be taking up to Ben More's summit, the only Munro on Mull, an extinct volcano. Note that if you plan to climb you should contact Benmore Estates Office to ensure no stalking is taking place; none of that today so we are safe to proceed. We leave the road at Dhiseig (Dishig), following the obvious rough path by the River Dhiseig up the slope which is boggy in places. We arrive at a plateau with a standing stone standing just over a metre tall and the remains of a hut circle indented into the ground. After the plateau, the ground becomes stonier, although not too bad with scree, and we see several cairns leading the way. Nearer the ridge, the track gets steeper but it’s worth our effort for the staggering vista at the top!

We return the way we came, rejoining the B8035 to continue our journey.