Ardbeg for work, Port Ellen for digs.
Actual travel to an actual place for actual work: back to the future.
And oh my, what a place to travel to. Go look at a map, Islay is physically near Glasgow and near Northern Ireland. Ferries/flights are your options, so it took (pretty much) a day to get there and a bare-bones airfare to NYC was about the same cost.
In days of yore I’d be on to the next before you knew it. But this trip offered the opportunity to pause and take it all in, so I factored in a day off and rented a bicycle from the super helpful Islay e Wheels.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, let it be known that they distil a wee dram or three on the island. They’re rather well known for it. This then forms a kind of pilgrimage of liver punishment for fire water fans from far and wide: you’ll hear many an accent on the Island.
Unwisely, I had decided to thread together a chain of dram-stops by bicycle. You’ll be slightly ahead of me here in thinking “booze and pedals don’t mix”, but giddy as a schoolboy this had not occurred to yours truly. Luckily, fate intervened before I headlong found a ditch… Entirely by good fortune the last day of work misfired deliciously – another story – and by 15.30 I was sat comfortably, faced with a flight of (extremely generously poured) whisky:
Memories of the rest of that Wednesday are fuzzy. Can’t imagine why…
Thursday dawned with rocks in my head. Thus my distillery odyssey became a search for a hangover cure. More about coffee and hydration than single malts (to begin with) on a 100km Tour d’Islay:
That’s 100km in the saddle on a beautiful sunny, peaceful, quiet day on Islay. Pinch me.
Words are unlikely to properly show what a jewel the island is, so looky here… a slideshow:
aroundtheworldin84days 