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.

The Street Art of Stokes Croft, Bristol

As part of my usual expedition to catch up with as many of my favorite people as possible while I'm in England, I headed down to Bristol for New Years Eve to see my friends Sam and Steve and the rest of their motley crew I associate with festivals, raves and long days of doing very little.

By the afternoon of the Second of January, I'd finally recovered enough to remember where I was and have a little explore...

This is Stokes Croft: Bristol's alternative cultural heart and home to a bohemian selection of squatters, hipsters and others who seem to enjoy a distinctly higher annual drug intake than elsewhere in the country. If you want to find street-art, Stokes Croft is the place to look.

"The Mild Mild West..."

Unless you're walking around with your eyes closed, it is pretty hard to miss this Banksy from Jamaica Street Junction.

According to the fountain of knowledge that is Wikipedia, it's been here for over twenty years, but had to have some restoration work after some idiot decided to smear red paint over it in 2009. It's looking pretty good again now though.









You'd think that a Banksy would be the highlight of my discoveries, but ever since I found him on the internet a year or so ago, my favourite street artist has always been Phlegm. His intricate black and white drawings have the mystical quality of characters from a fantasy novel and here, imposed on top of this red Tsunami, create a striking, but essentially playful mural. I love how he has used stilts to stop their feet getting wet and what is that bird doing?!


At this point I could have left Stokes Croft pretty happy with my afternoon's discoveries, but everywhere I turned there was more...

These two, on opposite sides of a small side street, are particularly fantastic... The expression on that elephant's face is excellent.

There seems to be a bit of a thing about telephone boxes...

The best way to find unusual pieces of street art that aren't immediately visible from the main street is to wander aimlessly down random alleyways until you find one that looks promising. 

Found this guy hiding in a corner...

So that is Stokes Croft. If you're in the area be sure to have a look for yourself as these walls get covered over fairly regularly and you're bound to find something new. 

Sydney and its surroundings... a medley

Over the last week, I've helped prepare for and attended a wedding* in the Sutton Forest, spent a couple of days discovering the area around Jervis Bay, enjoyed a family Christmas in Sydney, explored the city a little, visited the Blue Mountains and even tried my best to surf at Manly Beach.

So yes, it's been a bit manic, but we've found some fantastic places, all of which are fairly easily accessible from Sydney...

Fitzroy Falls-

On our way from the wedding venue to Jervis Bay, we stopped for a little walk along to Fitzroy Falls. The water itself wasn't doing much, but look at the view!

Jervis Bay and around-

Doing the tourist thing on the golf course.

Jervis Bay is around 200km down the coast from Sydney. You could hitch, we just bypassed it on our way down to Melbourne as we knew we were coming back.

Dan's parents, Rod and Janet, were kind enough to take us to stay in a house near Jervis Bay just after the wedding. This gave us a little time to explore Booderee National Park and even spot our first kangaroos.

Everybody keeps telling me that kangaroos are everywhere in Australia, but despite looking quite desperately, we hadn't yet managed to spot any. As with the koalas however, I was a little embarrassed by my initial excitement as we came across more and more over the next couple of days. If you're in the area and haven't had any luck yet, a sure place to find them is on the golf course at Sanctuary Point.

Being driven around in a hire car, it was pretty easy for us to find some of the nicest beaches, but if you don't
have that luxury, there are enough people around that it shouldn't be too hard to get a lift.

My personal favorite was Cave Beach. Being a little walk away from the carpark seems too weed out many of the area's less intrepid tourists, leaving us of the more robust variety to relax in peace, swim in the surf and on this occasion ponder the meaning of these aboriginal objects (any ideas?) standing in the sand.

Cave Beach

Green Patch

Boo!

Other uncrowded beaches include Green Patch and Murray Beach, which are both similar in their pale sand, clear water and lining of forest. From Murray Beach, you can walk to Governors Head and look across to Bowen Island  to spot the little penguins. One of our hitchhiking drivers told us that if you go here in the evening you'll see them fishing. We debated swimming across to get a better view, but I decided that if we were going to be stupid enough to face the possibility
 of having to have the coastguards called out, then I'd rather Dan's parents weren't there to witness it.

Hyams Beach, recommended to us by Carmel, was a little less quiet than the others we found, but (according to the locals) it has the whitest sand on Earth. In fact, on an overcast day when the sky and sea are just as light as the sand, the whole effect is very surreal and you feel as if you are wandering around in some sort of blindingly bright dream.

Hyams Beach- I had to shut out a lot of the light as my camera was also blinded!

My main advise for visiting Hyams beach, other than trying not to go in holiday season, is to wear sunglasses as I'm pretty sure I've gained a wrinkle from the squinting.

Hyams Beach

A family Christmas in Sydney-

Being  in Sydney for Christmas was strange as I've never been away from my family/England for these festivities, but Bridget's family made us really welcome and it was interesting to see how it's done on the other side of the globe. Comfortingly, excluding the temperature, the day was a similar whirlwind of the present exchanging, game playing and glutenous eating that I'm used to back home. The all-important dinner, lovingly prepared by a couple of hardworking ladies, was a little different than what we would traditionally have in Britain, but very tasty and it's pretty obvious why salad is more popular than roast potatoes in this heat. It was hard enough to move afterwards even without the pigs in blankets!

There were also a couple of nice traditions that I hadn't encountered before... firstly, and most excitingly for a poverty stricken vagabond like myself, was the distribution of scratchcards to everyone at the table. The rules are that if you win over $500 (I think) then you share it with the table, but anything less than that you keep. I WON $10!!! So yes, that was very exciting indeed. The other tradition, was to hide a set of fortune coins in everyone's Christmas pudding. Now, I've come across people who hide one coin before, but this set, with different pieces for things like 'marriage', 'wealth' and 'peace' make everyone at the table feel like they are the lucky one (Dan and I were happy to avoid the marriage coin- there have been enough comments since Ben and Bridget's wedding as it was!). They didn't set the pudding on fire, but then Australians aren't known for wasting their alcohol.

Exploring the city on Boxing Day- so much blue sky!

The Blue Mountains-

The view from the Three Sisters lookout platform.

 A shiny bug! :)

The endangered Blue Mountains Tree Gnome.

Katoomba is a two hour ($12 return) train journey from Sydney Central.

Dan and I had one spare day before we had to fly out, so we set out 'early'**. A day isn't long enough to do the Blue Mountains justice, but we had a good (if a bit sweaty) time walking from the Three Sisters, down the Giant Steps (there's  more than 800 of them), through the rainforest below and then up more steps the other side. The Three Sisters lookout platform was absolutely rammed with tourists (it is holiday season after all), but as usual, the further we walked, the less people we found,so that seems to be the way to escape.

I'd imagine you'd have a much more peaceful time elsewhere in the Blue Mountains if you had longer to explore. It would also be a great place to hike and camp as there are plenty of trails and alternative places to explore.

The end of our time in Oz (for now)...

Back in Sydney, Ben and Bridget brightened our end of holiday blues by taking us for an early morning surf on Manly Beach. The waves were pretty small, but as the only person there who really had no clue about what they were doing, I was secretly glad... Manly seems like a pretty cool area of town to live in (I can imagine commuting to work on the ferry across Sydney Harbour would be a difficult thing to get tired of) so I hope Ben and Bridget move there eventually and we can visit again!

An accidental but (I thought) rather artistic shot of the surf at Manly Beach. I'm sorry but my battery died soon after!

Now, going a little stir crazy in Sydney airport (which has free wi-fi by the way), I'm tentatively considering how feasible hitchhiking around the whole of Australia would be. Next time I'm in the area...


*Dan's brother Ben was getting married to the lovely Bridget (hence the actual important reason behind our trip). Congratulations guys, your wedding was beautiful and I'm so happy I was able to be a part of it.
**Ok, I think it might have been more like 10.30am...

Do you have any other suggestions for escaping the city? Leave a comment below. :)