Beautiful Bute
Categories: places
Date: 07 January 2011 22:14:33
I realise having posted a photo every day for Project365 I have so far omitted to tell you about our New Year break, which was spent bagging another Scottish island, this time Bute which is in the Firth of Clyde so very easy for us to get to (so we have no excuse really for not going before!). After our eventful December, with the burst pipe and dead car (not to mention the submitted thesis) I for one couldn't wait to get away for a few days.
We arrived on New Year's Eve and started off with a quick walk round Rothesay followed by panini in a hippy vegetarian cafe and music shop called musicker. Then it was off down to the south of the island to the village of Kilchattan Bay (which is basically just a road along the coast) where our hotel was - about 8 miles out of Rothesay. We had a quick wander through the village, which overlooked the island of Great Cumbrae which we visited for a day in January 2009, and then chilled out for the evening. The hotel was having a Hogmanay party so we wandered down around 11pm and got a pint each, but we felt a bit out of place, and it was difficult as inside was really noisy (band plus lots of people) and outside it was really cold, so we ended up sitting on a sofa in the porch which meant we didn't have to shout at each other but weren't standing outside freezing with the smokers. At 12 the guy who owned the hotel gave a firework display, and then the party carried on and we went to bed.
New Year's Day was nice and chilled. We got up late, and went for a drive around the island, stopping at the Scalpsie Bay viewpoint before heading off to Ettrick Bay in search of shipwrecks (I had been looking at photos on flickr and there were tons of pictures of it so I was really excited about this). 
Once we got there there wasn't a shipwreck in sight, and I later discovered that it is a good idea if doing a location search on flickr to check the dates of the photos as well as the locations! The photos were all from 2006 and the ship was removed I think some time in 2007. Never mind, Ettrick Bay was still pretty and it blew away plenty of cobwebs! My first Project365 photo is from that walk. After that we drove as far as we could up the island's west side, then headed over east to Rhubodach (which probably isn't pronounced Rubber Duck but I wish it was) which is only a few hundred yards from the mainland and which is where the other Bute ferry docks. From there we headed to Port Bannatyne as the other thing I wanted to see after my flickr searching was the derelict pier. That was still there at any rate, and appeared well colonised by cormorants. By this point it was very very cold so we headed back, and ate at another local hotel (the Kingarth -very nice pub grub indeed).
The next day was Sunday and I was all set to Mystery Worship a church in Rothesay. However, although we got to Rothesay in time we went the wrong way after getting out of the car and by the time we realised our mistake and retraced our footsteps we would have been so late we ended up not going at all. We thought we'd take a quick look at Rothesay Castle, a ruined castle in the town centre, but it was shut (like everything else) so we headed back to our hotel thinking we'd have a walk in the afternoon. However once we got back to our room and started lazing around neither of us could face going out in the cold again, so we stayed there for the duration, it was so nice to just have a lazy afternoon reading. I always feel guilty about going away and then not seeing and doing absolutely everything, like I'm wasting the opportunity, but it really was the best thing for us, as we both needed to chill!
The final day we did go for a long walk, starting off on the route of the West Island Way which starts in Kilchattan Bay and goes round the southern tip of the island before doubling back on itself and heading up the island. We had great views over to first Great then Little Cumbrae, then we saw Ailsa Craig (see my day 3 photo) and Holy Island, and finally the snow-capped mountains of the north of Arran. The first bit of the walk was a bit rocky, but doable (bear in mind I am a wussy walker) and it wasn't overly hilly (big plus in my book). 
We followed the West Island Way as far as the ruins of St Blane's Church, then cut over to the west side of the island through Plan Farm and followed the road back to Kilchattan Bay, stopping for a (most welcome) lunch at the Kingarth before the final mile and a half back to the hotel. Unfortunately with about a mile to go to the Kingarth I was becoming really aware of how painful my hips were so the sight of the Kingarth was really really welcome, the only problem was once we'd sat down for lunch the final walk back to our hotel was agony! We think I had bursitis (which is an inflammation of the sacs of fluid which sit in joints where muscle or tendon would otherwise rub against bone. Patellar bursitis is water on the knee, mine was in the hip joints and was really painful) - I got straight in the bath for a long soak once we got back to our room, but whilst it eased the tired muscles it didn't do a thing for the hip pain, and actually that night I hardly slept at all as the pain kept waking me up.
On Tuesday we headed back, our final tourist trip was to the Victorian toilets at Rothesay ferry terminal which are renowned for their craftsmanship and general impressiveness. The ladies' were a later addition (as the Victorians didn't think that ladies would do anything so vulgar as need the toilet when they were out in public), but the gents' are nearly all the original tiling and fittings, and are apparently really impressive. If it's quiet and any ladies want a look then the attendant lets you go in and take a peek at the gents, but as I was coming out of the ladies' I saw a man go in and to be honest I didn't want to see the urinals *that* much so I didn't bother waiting till he'd come out again! HD said they were very grand.
So there we are. I think I'd like to go again in the summertime to see it with leaves on the trees and blue skies - the weather was pretty uniformly grey and drizzly so didn't necessarily show Bute at its best, and because of the timing (arriving on new year's eve on a Friday, so the bank holidays were Monday and Tuesday) we found that most attractions and eateries were closed until the day after we were leaving. But we liked the scenery very much, and I have to say that for somewhere so close to the mainland and accessible from Scotland's biggest city it was really tranquil and peaceful and a good place for some much needed R&R and chilling out.
There is a flickr set of my favourite pictures (I took more!) here.