Continuing on my posts about our trip to Kintyre with CalMac ferries. You can read Part 1 here.
On Sunday, we were up early to catch the 10am ferry to the Island of Gigha. We’d been before, taking Ellis as a baby and had fallen in love with the tiny island just off of Kintyre, plus it has a botanic garden – Achamore – and I couldn’t wait to nosy around the plants.
The ferry takes just 20 minutes and with glorious warm, weather it felt like we were stepping off the boat into another world. Gigha is lush with plantlife, that coastal climate making it so intensely green and lush. In fact, where our leaves up here had started to turn weeks earlier, we could only find one sign that autumn was on its way to Gigha as well.
Our first stop was Achamore Gardens. Wandering around the woods and the gardens was really like stepping into the foothills of the Himalayas. There were rhododendron specimens everywhere, and while we had missed the blooms, it wasn’t hard to imagine the woods being a light with colour in the spring. The walled gardens were full of late summer blooms and we could see signs of the new work being undertaken to restore the gardens by its new caretakers the Achamore Gardens Trust.
We spent the rest of the morning wandering around the beautiful little island. First, exploring the ruins of the Kilchattan church, then heading to the north of the island for some beach time. We had reservations for lunch at the Boathouse at the dock and I begrudgingly peeled myself off of the beach.
If I had known what came next, I would have run. Holy lobster. I have never been a huge fan of seafood since an unfortunate incident with a fish finger when I was 3. I always want to like it, but very rarely can be convinced to try some. Well, count me a convert. The Boathouse’s menu of local (as in so local the lobsters are actually in kreels at the end of the dock and the oysters and halibut are from down the road) seafood completely knocked my socks off. I even ate an oyster. And loved it. Lobster mac n cheese, fresh langoustine tails, good bread and an outside table with a view of the sea. The perfect way to end a holiday before we made our way back by ferry to the mainland.
