A great weekend! Highly recommended and I would love to go back to Tiree, a beautiful island with amazing sandy beaches, wind and surf – the Hawaii of the North!
As we approached Tiree on Friday evening it certainly did not feel like Hawaii! It was wet, breezy and murky and as well as feeling cold and fairly miserable I was also feeling quite sorry for those who had been camping at the Tiree Music Festival – including my niece Jane and her family; at least we could stay reasonably dry inside Little Scarlet, and we had a good heater!
After a long and boring day motor-sailing from Tobermory we secured to a buoy off the ferry port at Scarinish, had a cup of tea, inflated Terry and headed ashore. We had expected to find shuttle buses running form the ferry port to the festival site but the minibus on the jetty was waiting for one of the evenings’ performers to arrive by RIB – his flight had turned back earlier as it was unable to land on the island due to the low cloud!
So we did the obvious thing and walked to the nearest bar – a kind of surf bar in a small hotel and considered our options over a beer. The barman suggested it would take us 45 minutes or so to walk to the festival so we decided we’d head off along the road. Forty five minutes later we had seen lots of sheep, a few oyster-catchers (I think) and lots of angry terns but there was no sign of a festival.
Around half and hour later we were there – and in amongst the clouds found some tents, lots of damp people and a couple of stages with some music! We quickly met Jane and family and were treated to some great acts, I especially enjoyed Trail West; they were brilliant.
Sadly there was no transport back to the ferry port so we had no choice but to walk – we arrived back onboard Little Scarlet at around 02:15 having walked a total of around nine miles! We vowed to move Liuttle Scarlet and the following morning, after a lazy start, we anchored off the festival – we could see the stages from our cockpit!
Saturday was another great day although still a little damp; Tiree seemed to be stuck in a cloud! We were joined by my godson, Chris who had arrived by ferry that morning. Saturday’s musical highlights for me included Skipinnish, Talisk and more from Trail West and their friends. It felt very special to be able to watch the end of the set, walk two minutes from the stage, lift Terry the Tender into the water and be back on board Little Scarlet within a few minutes with a cup of tea! Perfect!
Sunday was another good day and the sun eventually appeared too! Nigel took the opportunity to go surfing (!) and left me to play pirates with my great niece and nephew. The pirate hat proved to be a bit of a hit and the pirate gets coverage in some of the music festival’s ‘official’ media and he was interviewed and photographed by the Oban Times!
Despite the sun, the anchorage had become increasingly rolly during Sunday as the wind had shifted so in order to have a good night’s sleep we decided to leave the anchorage early on Sunday evening and head back to the mooring buoy at the ferry port. It was a pity to leave before the final acts but we had had great weekend we wanted to have a good night before heading off northwards again.
