Tober-more- y

We kind of knew that our first Tobermory day would be a soggy one. Then a  dry one, then a soggy one. Yes, the west coast in summer was in full glory. Mind you, the south coast of England wasn't much better so....

We had to make the compulsory pilgrimage up the hill to the An Tobar arts centre. Why? Well, in addition to some rather good artwork, they had a really good coffee and home-made cake area. After duly staggering up the hill (no oxygen was needed) we had another shock horror moment. This year it is coffee only - no cakes on offer and a very stripped down cafe arrangement. Crisis, after Lucy's in Ardfern going off the boil, the lovely community centre place in Lochaline being shut, this was another body-blow.  

We manfully drank an average coffee, bemoaned the past glories of the place and toddled back down the hill, enjoying the views of course. Not sure they made the near coronary experience of walking up the hill worthwhile though:

It seemed that the town was in IT trouble even before the big Microsoft / CrowdStrike issue hit:

We thought that the "pain in the bum" description was an excellent way of describing IT issues. 

On the soggy day, things went even further downhill when these pretty little craft arrived:

Yes, our liner curse had struck in the little hamlet of Tobermory. The Seaborne Quest was anchored off and from time to time as drizzly rain swept in, it vanished then reappeared from the murk:

It (cannot call that ship a "she" really) had left the salubrious Tilbury and was bound for New York via Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. The clientele were mainly elderly and grumpy looking Americans who came ashore, tried to spear people with their huge umbrellas and then scuttled back to safety and luxury of the ship. Once again, in common with many liner passengers, they thought that they had bought the narrow pavements around here. 

We had a chance to catch up with the folks from Norn Iron (Keith and Ingrid) again when they arrived on their yacht. We decided that we had to try out the newly renovated Western Isles hotel, the scene of an escape from torrential rain (there is a theme here) several years ago when we visited with Andrew and Linda. Happily it has been improved a lot, both inside and out:

and the location above the harbour area could not be better:

with great views from it down the loch. So, we managed a pretty substantial Sunday lunch sitting at a window in the conservatory restaurant with Keith and Ingrid:

Bailey the dog enjoyed the remnants of beef and a bit of cheese too, then did his "king of the castle" thing:

He is such a good lad and rather cute too.

The next day we managed to stagger up the main road out of the village (or is it town?) to go to the little retail area. Yes, there are serious hills in every direction. It seemed a lot more than the 197 feet mentioned by Google maps:  

No matter, it was worth it. Nice folks run the Island Blue Gallery, some great art, OK coffee and v good cake so we were happy, especially as it was downhill on the way back.

As it was a settled sort of day, the harbour area had cleared out quite dramatically and we looked a bit deserted:

until during the evening the fish farm workboats arrived:

with cranes that make ours look rather feeble:

All in all, a good time here in a pretty unique place.

Maintenance news:

On the soggy, liner passenger infested day, the captain had a momentary lapse of reason. You could argue that is situation normal of course. He decided to remove some of the front drive belt covers, clean up any belt dust inside there and check on the condition of the belts themselves.  Here is the front of the engine with a couple of the covers out of place:

You can see the chunky multi-vee belt that drives the big alternator on the top left and the coolant pump. If that belt failed, it would be shut down time for the engine; the replacement is not a 10 minute job either. We would prefer to avoid that maintenance opportunity whilst underway. A little bit of boat cleaning followed on. Just a little. Poor boat.