Tuesday August 7th - Finlaggan and the Island Sheeps

Tuesday August 7th

Cloudy cool morning with spatters of rain and then just cloudy with sunny breaks

Finlaggan 

and 

the Island Sheeps

From the little cafe in Bowmore, where we had coffee upstairs, we drove off to Finlaggan the ancient seat of the Lords of the Isles, where the MacDonalds reigned supreme from 1266.

On the way we passed a grazing sheep - reminded me of the "Sheeps" in "The Hills is Lonely" by Lillian Beckwith

We finally got there after driving down some pretty dodgy roads - if you could call them that! Mary-Ann said "Is that it?" She had been expecting a little village with toilets and a place to rder some lunch and all it was was a Visitors Centre in a shed - a nice one - and a little museum - a nice one. As for the rest of the site it was just tussock, bracken, a loch and some ruins on an island - but beautiful in its isolation. Looking back up to the Visitor's Centre:

Here on an island was situated the Lord's main residence on Eilean Mor (the Large Island) all now just a collection of ruins, "Look on my works ye mighty and despair", Ozymandias by Shelley

You had to walk over a section of marshy lake to get to the island - "Eilean Mor" -The Big Island where it all used to be:

... and then you were at of what was left of their kingdom

Sad place really!