12/09/17-13/09/17
In Oban the following morning we did some supermarket shopping to stock up on a few essentials before going over to Mull. Our plans were going to take us to the western side of Mull where we knew that shops would be small and sparsely scattered.
The ferry to Mull was pretty uneventful and the weather was dull and rainy still.
Bertie in pole position on the way to Mull
As soon as we got off the ferry at Craignure we turned left and in a couple of hundred yards we were at our campsite for the night. The Shielings campsite offers touring pitches and also self-catering ‘Shielings’ which were constructed from a heavy duty white waterproof canvas. In fact this fabric was also used in the construction of some of the toilet blocks, the laundry room and the washing up area as well as being used for smaller items such as pockets to hold your shower gel/shampoo. It seemed very versatile stuff but made the campsite look a bit like an army camp in a very scenic war zone.
View from The Shielings campsite
The Shielings did have good industrial sized washers and driers, and we were able to get all of our laundry cleaned and dried. I also re-proof our supposedly waterproof trousers. Hopefully they really are waterproof now.
We used the time to investigate a problem with our roof light. This is an electrically operated RemiSTAR roof light which uses a gear mechanism to lift and drop the Perspex ‘lid’. The last couple of times we had used it the gears had been making awful crunching sounds and our online investigations has revealed that ‘gear stripping’ was a common fault with them due to the way that the cable was made. We took a look and sure enough the gears were stripped. Replacement gears have been ordered and we’ll hopefully pick them up from Mum and Dad when we see them in October. A good thing then that the weather is getting cooler and we’re not requiring the roof ventilation quite so much.
We didn’t do much else while we were here apart from a short cycle ride up the road and lots of wandering around the shore in between the rainy spells.
Highland cattle – looking pretty