Our final day on the island was to be a walking day around Ardskenish, the south-west end of the island. This is a really beautiful and relatively remote area, blasted by the weather off the Atlantic, and made of dunes, beaches and skerries.
Seals were all over the place in these waters and numerous waders scurried along the beaches feeding.
The opposite coast of the peninsula backs on to the deep U shaped and sheltered bay of Traigh nam Barc.
The house at Ardskenish sits pretty well in the middle of the peninsula, surrounded by flowering machair teeming with redshank, snipe, oystercatchers,lapwing. ringed plovers, teal, mallard ..... you get the picture. One night during World War II the house was apparently clipped by a low flying plane and became something of a local attraction. It is no longer permanently occupied.
Some serious work went in to wall building hereabouts, and while they are no longer tended they remain an attractive feature of the landscape.
The islets and skerries offshore look like they could provide interesting rock-hopping, but that wasn't going to happen today. Next time perhaps.
We lingered a long time before leaving the peninsula behind. It was a superb day.
Roll on our next visit to Colonsay. We won't wait 30 years.
2 comments:
A super series of posts Vince, really enjoyed them. Colonsay is somewhere I've yet to visit, you've put it right on my list!
Kind regards
Thanks Ian. I must admit I was surprised how much I liked the island - my memories from my earlier visit were obviously coloured by my preference for climbing at that time and big hills. Blame Douglas for this visit: he posted a couple of years back about a trip he did to the island from Islay and I decided I ought to go back.
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