Eight amazing seaside spots on the Isle of Islay- advice from a local.

Islay- the location of the majority of my childhood holidays and now home to my family, I've always known there were plenty of amazing places to see on Islay (even if it is a bit chilly at this time of year). I do realise however, that the majority of people will either have never heard of it or have just seen the name on expensive whiskey bottles, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite places... You can't beat the advice of a local!

Where is it? -Islay is one of the most Southery islands of the Inner Hebrides. You can zoom in and out on this map to see where it is and where my favorite spots are.



How many people live there? -Just over three thousand in the winter, but quite a few more in holiday season.

How can you get around? -If you don't have your own vehicle, Hitchhiking is remarkably easy, you can hire bikes, walk or maybe even kayak if you're into that.

What can I look foreward to? -empty beaches, exciting wildlife (seals, eagles, deer, otters etc), friendly people and weather that might not be quite as bad as you imagine.

Know before you go- It's pronounced 'I-la' not 'is-lay' and yes people will laugh at you if you say it wrong.

1. The Oa- that weird blob that sticks out from the South coast. The Oa has some awe-inspiring cliffs and many deserted beaches. It's also a likely place to spot one or two of the island's famous golden eagles. 

Thanks Chalky for the use of your camera! ...oh and your car :)

2. Saligo Bay- an incredible sandy beach with handy rocks to sit on around the edges. Islay is so remote that my family used to get genuinely annoyed when we had to share the beach with another family. 

3. Portnahaven- a little village on the South-West tip of the island. It's picturesque even when the weather is bad and the best place to spot seals. They're really tame here and often come within a few meters of the shore.

4. Machir Bay- over a mile of sand dunes and clean, empty beach. It can get pretty windy down there and watch out for the currents if you're brave enough to go swimming.

5. Sanaigmore- a beautiful sandy beach with the type of strange protruding rocks that Thailand is famous for (admittedly on a smaller scale). It also has an interesting little local art gallery called 'Outback Art' which doubles up as a coffee shop.

6. Killinallan- with these abandoned farmhouses and the endless beach, it's worth exploring the countryside around Killinallan, just give the bull a wide berth. We think he's harmless, but that bellow sounds a bit intimidating!

7. Kildalton Cross- OK, so it's not quite on the seaside, but erected over 1,200 years ago, Kildalton Cross is the only early Christian cross still standing in its original position. That's got to be worth a visit?

8. Proiag Bay- Pretty much as remote as you can get in a day. Firstly you drive to the end of the road, then to the end of that track to Ardtalla Farm. From Ardtalla there's an interesting (and sometimes very boggy) walk to the abandoned farm Proiag. This old farmhouse has been made into a bothy, with working fireplace an often dry firewood, so if you fancy camping out for the night, you don't even need to bring a tent.

Had enough of empty beaches? Maybe this guy will cheer you up...

Thanks for reading! Ever been to the Hebrides? Which island and what did you think?

How to beg, borrow and steal* your way around Australia when all you have in your pocket is a collection of receipts and an old toothpick...

*Just to clarify- I don’t condone pick-pocketing, it’s just a good phrase.

Watch out for these cheeky chappys...

1. Hitchhike- in case you hadn’t guessed I’m quite a fan… Tips for hitchhiking in Australia
2. Make use of free campsites- you could pay $30 to stay in a crowded caravan park with a load of screaming kids OR you could pitch up in a nice, quiet spot by the beach for free. Admittedly some of the places we camped weren’t exactly designated spots, but if you are organised you could locate the legitimate ones on the internet, by asking in tourist offices or download the app ‘wiki camps’.
3. So that’s your travel and accommodation sorted, what else do you need? I’m afraid I haven’t found a way of getting free food on the road yet (although you could probably get quite a bit of meat off that dead wombat we saw), but the cheapest food we found in Australia came from Aldi. $2.50 for a bottle of wine?! You can't go wrong.
4. Don’t buy water! Even small towns often have a tap somewhere or just ask in a café if you haven’t got that many bottles to fill up.      NOTE: If you can only find a stupid vertical drinking fountain it’s best to fill up a larger container/cup and decant, rather than go through the frustration we did trying to aim the jet towards a tiny bottle entrance without getting soaked.
5. Beach towns have showers- they are cold, but it's better than smelling like a tramp when you get in someone's car. If you can’t find an outside shower then it’s probably worth paying to use a swimming pool (maybe shower before you get in…).
6. There are free BBQs everywhere in public parks. If you don’t have your own stove, then these are a great way to get a hot meal.
7. Minimise your time in the big cities. It’s very hard to camp, get a lift and they generally gobble up your budget much faster than when you're out in the sticks.
   
8. Don’t pay to see koalas, kangarooos etc. It’s kind of cheating and if you spend enough time outside you’ll come across them naturally. NOTE: For guaranteed sightings-kangaroos and koala
9. Don’t smoke, or if you must then buy your cigarettes abroad. One packet costs around the same as a night in a hostel!
10. If you have an early flight, just sleep in the airport! ...unless you're leaving from Avignon as apparently they throw you out.  Check if it's possible to sleep in your airport here -http://www.sleepinginairports.net/

Sorry, I just couldn't resist another koala photo.

AND some other things you could try if you had a little more time than we did...

1. Couch surfing
2. Working- possibly picking fruit. We heard it pays quite well.
3. Volunteering- have a look on the website 'workaway' for opportunities with free food and lodging. 

You might also like... 

Beg, Borrow and Steal your way out of Athens during a riot.

or...

Hitchhiking Sydney to Melbourne.

or maybe even...

Hitchhiking in Australia- some Feathery tips.

Hitchhiking in Australia- some Feathery tips...

1. Don't look like a tramp! People can be pretty suspicious and if they think you might be smelly, thieving or murderous, you've got no chance. Don't smoke as it's really frowned upon by a lot of people here and if you're a mixed couple, get the girl to stand in front (we are less intimidating and people tend to feel a bit more sorry for us).

2. Don't BE smelly (or thieving and murderous). You'll give us a bad name and people will make excuses to get you out of their car early.

3. Keep on smiling however fed up you're feeling- nobody is going to pick up a grumpy hitchhiker. If you have time, make a humorous sign to hold up to attract their attention.

4. Make sure you actually are good company once you get a lift. Ask lots of questions (in a non-interigatory fashion) to avoid awkward silences.

• 'Do you live around here?
• 'Do you like the area?'
• 'Do you see many hitchhikers around here?'
• 'Ever done any hitchhiking yourself?' -most people who pick you up will have done- hopefully it will spark them off on a story.
• 'What made you decide to stop?'

5. Stand at the beginning of a space long enough for cars to pull in off the road without being in danger of the car behind smashing into them. This is obviously particularly important on fast highways and don't even try to hitch from the massive freeways around city centers unless you want to die.

6. Don't stand in the road. I'm pretty sure it's illegal and even if not, just pretty damn stupid. 

7. If you're having trouble getting a lift, be flexible. Is there a nearby town in another direction that it might be easier to get a lift from?

8. Be patient. You're getting a free ride- it's not supposed to be that easy.

9. Be safe! Mixed gender couples work best for maximum safety/amount of lifts, but two people is always better than one.

10. If you feel unsafe, ask them to stop... if they won't and you're really scared, one man suggested to us that we should slam the handbrake on and run in different directions. I'm not sure how cool I am condoning that- make sure there are no cars behind! Probably a better suggestion would be to either make, or pretend to make, a phonecall to somebody saying where you are. The emergency number is 000 here, but don't worry, you really wont need it!

For some detailed information have a look on- http://hitchwiki.org/en/Australia

Phantom Falls, Lorne, Australia

Why you should never pay to see the Great Ocean Road...

There are a variety of options if you want to see the Great Ocean Road. Obviously the ideal choice would be to drive, but for those of us on the really frayed shoe-string budget, byeing or renting a car is pretty much out of the question. Hitchhiking on the other hand, is affordable (obviously) and unbelievably easy in this area- we barely had to wait more than ten minutes for a ride.

Accommodation in Australia is always pretty expensive and being so popular, the Great Ocean Road is especially bad. Even a non-powered tent pitch in a crappy caravan park can be $40. Thankfully we actually found some legitimate free campsites in the national parks along here, so that wasn’t a problem either. To find these, you might want to download an app called wikicamp, as we've been told  this is really helpful.

River by Allenvale Mile campsite.

With accommodation and travel available for free, there is really no need to bust your budget ticking off this famous road-trip from your bucket list. It was so easy that we were almost a bit bored in comparison to our adventure between Sydney and Melbourne… but we did get to meet some lovely people, spot a lot of exciting wildlife and see this coastline for nothing more than the price of our food. 

By Allenvale.

We began our excursion with a seven dollar train ride to Geelong (good luck to you if you fancy hitching out of Melbourne’s city centre) and, as we were running pretty late already decided to catch a bus from there to Torquay and the beginning of the Great Ocean Road. To our delight, the bus’s swipe-in system was broken and we got a free ride, but the driver wasn’t too optimistic about our chances of hitching to our first free campsite that night and recommended we get another bus. I guess he was just doing his job as we only had to wait ten minutes before our first lift. The lady who picked us up was exactly the last sort of person I would expect to stop; well-dressed, alone and driving a pretty nice car, but to our surprise she knew of a free campsite in Lorne. Allenvale Mile, buried deep in the forest, was where we spotted our first koala. Now we’ve seen so many that our excitement at that one is a bit embarrassing, but it was a nice way to start the journey. 

Allenvale Mile Campsite- I was a bit in love with these ducks...

We stopped for lunch in Apollo Bay.

From here, we never had a problem finding lifts out of the campsites every morning. That night, we met some people who were driving West, so our morning was sorted (this is what I mean about it being easy) and after we left them, our second ride took us all the way to Cape Otway. These international students from Melbourne university drove past us, turned around to come back and pick us up and then had to turn round again ten minutes up the road when we realised that we’d left Dan’s camera bag (containing the obvious camera, but also all his money and a microphone with all of his sound files saved on it). It was a tense journey back, but the inhabitants of Wye River are obviously a trustworthy bunch and it was still sitting there on the bench. 

If you want to see a koala, the road down to Cape Otway is the place to do it. Unfortunately, this information is freely given out from tourist information centres and half of Victoria’s visitors that day had beaten us there. People were driving five kilometers an hour in zig-zags, straining their necks to look up in the trees, parking up willy-nilly and running across the road regardless of irritated local drivers. The koalas seemed exhausted, but I’m pretty sure that’s normal anyway.

   

From Cape Otway, Australia’s most southerly point and home of ‘Australia’s most significant lighthouse’ which we didn’t pay to have the privilege of seeing, Dan and I began the somewhat exhausting trek to Blanket Bay. If you’re hitching, it would be best to get dropped off at the entrance of Blanket Bay Road and either wait (what could be a rather long time) for a lift down there or brave the five kilometre trek on foot. This campsite is free apart from in holiday season, has allocated fire pits and is situated pretty much right on the beach, so there’s no need to pay to stay down at the Cape Otway.

Blanket Bay

At Blanket Bay, we were befriended by a German man named Ralph* who was again driving West the next morning. With Ralph, we stopped by Johanna Beach (to check out our campsite for that evening), the misleadingly named Prince‘town’ (and all four buildings it consisted of), the Twelve Apostles and finally Port Campbell. I was a bit disappointed by this stretch of the road. If half of Vicoria’s tourists are checking out the koalas, the other half were certainly crammed along the viewing platform at the Twelve Apostles. Pretty much anywhere with a viewing platform is bad news. The cliffs are incredible, but there are better places to look at the than here. Try and find a less publicised track down to one of the beaches and you might get to experience them in a little bit of peace. Failing that, I’d go early in the morning if you can find a lift with somebody going to work or something.

A few apostles, carefully cutting out everyone else's extended camera arms.

With Port Campbell being little to write home about either (just a typical touristy beach town), we were happy to head back to the wilder Johanna for the evening. This beach was my favourite since we stayed at Longswamp a week ago and we were actually allowed to camp here for free.

Johanna Beach is beautiful.

After a lazy morning and a short attempt at swimming (the waves are crazy down there), we decided to try out a little bit of the Great Ocean Walk** to Castle Cove. Unfortunately, this section wasn’t quite as short as we thought and we actually struggled to get back before dark. Over-excitable as ever, I would have done the whole thing twice for a chance to see the porcupine and wallabies that surprised us along the way… 

'This is me in a forest' ...There were some very strange plants along the path.

Castle Cove

Johanna Beach

Noisy kookaburras at Allenvale Mile. 

Our lucky streak with the lifts continued for the next couple of days as we wove our way back to Lorne and finally Melbourne thanks to the kindness of people we met along the way. Sophie and Freeman, our final drivers and friends for an evening around the fire and morning in the sea, were kind enough to drive us strait back to Melbourne’s central station, so it really couldn’t have been easier.***

*Hi there Ralph if you’re reading this.

**The Great Ocean Walk goes from Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles, but you have to pay for a camping permit which seems pretty stupid as some of the campsites are just right next to the free ones anyway. 

***Thanks guys! Sophie has a pretty awesome tumblr- homesickpipe.tumblr.com

Hitchhiking Sydney to Melbourne...

Night 1- a horse field

Excluding a train journey to Dapto, which we needed in order to escape the massive freeways out of Sydney, Dan and I managed to successfully travel from Sydney to Melbourne, over the course of five days, without paying for either any transport or accommodation...

We're pretty happy about that!

As you can imagine, this lead to a few interesting situations over the course of journey- have a look at our route on my carefully crafted map at the  bottom of this post.

Dapto itself was not an encouraging place to begin;  most people looked at us as if we were clinically insane, some gestured wildly and one even swore at us out the window. Nevertheless we were picked up within half an hour and our first friendly driver took us twenty kilometers down the road- not a monumental start, but after our faffing in Sydney, it was already quite late by the time we arrived in Kiama.

6am, Kiama

Debilitated by jetlag, heavy bags and indecisiveness, we trekked around and eventually out of the town until we were desperate enough to camp in an empty field, on a hill, right on top of a lumpy horse poo. With me being too cocky to bring a sleeping bag (it would be hot in Australia surely), Dan having lost his roll mat on the flight, a tent too short for him to lie flat in and both of us being to exhausted to get our stuff into any sort of organised state, that night was never going to go well. With the additional fear of being discovered  and a river of condensation running freely off the sides of our tent, it was a disaster.

Consequently, we were up and packed by five am and on the road again by six. Unfortunately, we beat the cars and had to wait a while for our first ten kilometer lift down the road. The truck driver who finally picked us up did little to instill us with confidence...

We probably wouldn't have any luck from now on... Could he drop us off at a train station?

Beach at Bermagui

Thankfully we weren't deterred and only had to wait twenty minutes for our next lift. This was our big break! Adam drove us a couple of hundred kilometers, gave us a little tour of Mollimuck, showed us his amazing beach at Rosedale and even took us to have coffee with his friends at Mossey Point. He finally left us in Moruya where we were picked up by a man with a goats skull in his back window, and a sharks jaw hanging from his rear view mirror, who drove us to Narooma.

By now, we'd been driving through forest for most of the day, so it seemed a logical step to try and camp in a disused picnic area or something similar and we planned to simply hitch out of town to a suitable spot and stop there for the night. Our next driver however had other ideas...

The lady who picked

Rock pool crazy lady showed us

us up, henceforth to be referred to as 'Crazy Woman', was a tornado of high-speed chatter, dubious advise and misplaced helpfulness. Before we knew it, she was driving us off the Princes Highway to meet her friends, taking us to the beach for a swim and expecting us to camp in her garden that night. The surf at Bermagui, was a welcome refreshment, but after an hour or so in her company our ears were ringing and we craved a quiet spot for the night. It's quite awkward to turn down hospitality in these sorts of situations, but luckily Dan was a little more forthright than me and just diplomatic enough to persuade her that we might look for somewhere to camp on the beach instead.

Thankfully, instead of taking the hump, she drove us around on a whirlwind tour of the area in search of somewhere to pitch up. Longswamp beach seemed perfect: endless, beautiful and most importantly empty, we said our goodbyes, waited until dark and built a fire to cook our noodles on while we hid our little tent in the dunes. Upon waking up at 4.30 again, the morning's sunrise persuaded us beyond a doubt that Crazy Woman had done us a favour even if it wasn't exactly in the way she first intended.

Longswamp Beach

Our fire at Longswamp Beach

Our little tent in the dunes at Longswamp Beach

Sunrise at Longswamp

Goodbye Longswamp

It was however, a sleepy Sunday and we'd left the highway to join the somewhat deserted coastal road along the Sapphire Coast, so leaving Bermagui was a bit of a challenge in itself... The day progressed in a series of hot walks, beautiful beaches and ten kilometer rides down the road. The four lifts it took us to get to Merimbula and back onto the highway showed us the most beautiful stretches of coastline we'd explored so far- getting rides with locals is fantastic as they seem to love showing of their favorite places. This way, we got to see several amazing beaches we'd never have found on our own and the nice lady who drove us the final stretch into Merimbula even gave us a tour of the whole town, showed us the view from the headland and dropped us in a handy lay-by on the highway.

A pelican!

I was sad to leave the coastal road, but we had no trouble getting a couple of lifts to Eden where, to our delight, we were shown a free BBQ. This was a very exciting discovery as we've still not managed to find the right gas for my stove and have been eating primarily cheese sandwiches, so we cooked up a feast of hotdogs to sustain us for the evening.

...Little did we know how much we were going to need that energy for the next few hours.

An awesome beach we found along the way

By now, we'd had a long, hot day and were really just looking for somewhere to sleep again. We'd got this far without paying for a pitch and were loathed to start now, so we trekked up the massive hill, out of Eden, and began trying to catch another ride. Unfortunately, it wasn't happening and tired, hot and impatient, we gave up after about half an hour and began trekking down the highway in the hopes of camping at the next little beach.

Cars crashed over the edge of Princes Highway

We walked... and walked ...and walked...

The Princes Highway is not designed for pedestrians and skirting along the metal barrier next to a vertical
drop into the forest below would have been off-putting enough, even if it wasn't for the heat, and the bags, and the flies. My back was hurting, Dan's foot was hurting and we weren't drinking enough water, but our unreliable tourist map assured us that the beach was just around the corner...

or was it the next corner...

maybe just around this next bend?!

Eventually we found it: Quarrentine Bay, but crushing all our hopes, we discovered it was a Yacht club. By now, I felt like I had a touch of sunstroke and desperation was setting in for both of us. We were just discussing our possibilities when a car slowed down to a stop beside us...

'Are you hitching?'

Ted was our savior that evening. He gave us a room for the night, some proper food and a copious amount of his home made gin, all without murdering us in our beds, and for that I will be eternally grateful. His property was amazing (you can see where it was on the map below) and he showed us his many boats, dogs and cows, while recounting his rather exciting life story. If his stories are to be trusted, he was a landscape gardener who had designed zoos, had traveled the world extensively, was a lawyer, had circumnavigated Australia in a matter of days on a moterbike, built boats, was a farmer and had a close friend in the Lord of Chester. To be honest, I couldn't care less how much of this was true as he'd saved us from the 'Walk of Death' and dropped us off at the nearest 'town' in the morning.

Ted's house is in the top-left hand corner. This is his garden...

Riding in the back of Ted's pick-up.

Down by the river.

Genoa

The thriving metropolis of Genoa consisted of around two houses, a pub and a closed cafe, which we stood across the road from for a couple of hours as the wind got up and it began to rain a little. It's surprisingly cold down here sometimes, but I didn't want to wear my trousers in fear of looking like too much of a hippy and missing out on lifts. After a two hours, a helpful, but disproving lady came over to tell us of our idiocy- we wouldn't have any luck waiting there. Apparently there was a storm brewing- she obviously didn't think much of our nonchalant attitude, it 'wasn't funny', but we could shelter in her closed cafe if we were still there in two hours. Another van entitled 'Queens Kebabs' stopped and inform us that they were driving to Melborne the next day if we were still there then.

All in all, this wasn't very encouraging...

We were just beginning to give up hope when a couple of hill-billies, a man with one tooth and a tiny lady in the passenger seat, pulled over to let us in. For the next couple of hundred kilometers, we were regaled with tales of his encounters with the police, a variety of racist remarks and other interesting opinions which we hadn't encountered much since getting into the country. At one point I thought we might have broken his car boot and was wondering if we were going to have to make a run for it, but thankfully it was fine and they were nothing but helpful all the way, showing us the view over Lakes Entrance and dropping us off at a tourist information.The pair were travelling all the way to Melbourne, but we were unwilling to end our adventure so soon and asked to get out in Sale in the hopes of travelling along the coast.

From here, life was a bit miserable for a while. It was raining and we were cold, but we eventually got a few lifts down to Seaspray, a dead end town on Ninety-Mile Beach. We camped in an abandoned campsite, under a tree, next to a bin and slept very little in our damp clothes and too little bedding in fear of being turfed out at any moment.

Our desolate camp spot in Seaspray.

Ninety-Mile Beach looking pretty in the morning

We had little more luck the next morning, initially stuck in a dead-end town, then in the lay-by of an apparently unpopular stretch of highway for several hours, massacred by flies, chilly and damp, we were getting a bit grumpy. Eventually, we gave up, caught a lift back to Sale in the hopes of catching a lift along the Princes Highway again. Having achieved very little on our excursion away from the main road, it was a bit depressing to watch car after car drive past, knowing that if only we had stayed with the hill-billies, we could have been in Melbourne by then.

We needed a big break to cheer us up again and it came in a most unexpected form... Queens Kebabs!!! They recognised us and stopped right in the middle of the highway regardless of other traffic. The two Turkish men waited for us to run up to them before driving us, sat on their fishing gear in the back of the van, all the way into the city.

With our friends Karl and Sarah to stay with in Melbourne, our problems were over for now and we could relax in the knowledge that we'd proved wrong the naysayers.