Alas! Earwax!

It was a long-awaited trip that reunited us with family. Mum and her sister (Aunty) Liz were visiting the UK for 6 weeks and we had a couple of opportunities to catch up with them while they were here. They had a jam-packed itinerary that started in Edinburgh, took them the remote and far north Shetland Islands and back down the west coast of Scotland, finishing their journey in London.

Taking a few days off work at Lagavulin, our first opportunity to catch up was as they navigated their way down the west coast of Scotland having already visited the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and Skye. Our chosen rendezvous destination was Fort William.

From Islay, Fort William is a little tricky to get to on public transport with the ferry and a few different buses to catch; however, we managed and squeezed in an essential stop in Oban along the way. The Oban distillery is one of our ‘old’ favourite whiskies (from before we left Australia), so of course we needed to reassess if it still claims such an honour in our whisky cabinet 😉 The Oban distillery team welcomed us with open arms and treated us like royalty – fortunately for them we were delivering (on behalf of Lagavulin leadership) some rare and beautiful Lagavulin drams for them to taste, and fortunately for us they in return showered us with whisky. After our distillery tour, by chance Nicole was recognized by a group of Brazilian whisky lovers who she had hosted on her tour at Lagavulin earlier in the week. As a thank you for her tour they bought us the most expensive whisky on the menu, a 21yr old Balvenie ‘port wood’. It was delicious. 

The following day we progressed to Fort William for the long awaited family reunion although the weather was on the cool side it was wonderful to settle into our wee Airbnb, a cute little lochside cabin whose unique combo of furnishings, tiles, frangipanis ,coloured LED lights and internal windows, would probably been more at home in the red light district of Bangkok than the quaint west coast of Scotland. We all slept soundly bathed in the eerie LED glow.

Together we explored the local areas shops, cafes and saw some sights, but the highlight activity we planned was the Jacobite steam train (also known as the Harry Potter train) journey from Fort William to Mallaig, return. Managing to get some ‘on the day’ tickets, we had an amazing time seeing the sights as the steam engine pulled us across Glenfinnan viaduct, famous for being featured in 4 Harry Potter movies, Highlander, The Crown and many others, as well as featuring on the Scottish 10-pound note. We revelled in the nostalgia of the train journey, and even shared a packet of Bertie Bots every flavour beans, which did not disappoint as flavours of earthworm, vomit, ear wax (alas!) gave us a culinary experience one would not expect when eating jelly beans on a train.

All in all it was a great time but a short catch up, knowing that we had further plans to catch up the following week. Nicole and I ducked back to Islay to work for a week and in doing so we happened to catch an amazing aurora before we were away again to see Mum and Liz, this time we were off to Bath, Watford and London to see more sights. 

After a long day of travel (approx. 17hrs from Islay to Bath by ferry, bus followed by 5 connecting trains…) we met up in Bath, an old Roman town famous for the hot spring that gave rise to the Roman baths in the area, and after seeing some sights, enjoying the market and the museum we moved on to Watford, home of Harry Potter Studios. I wasn’t too sure what to expect but I didn’t expect to be as blown away by the experience as we all were. Seeing the Harry Potter sets come to life and getting some insights into the effort and money going into every detail of a scene was mind blowing. Literally every prop and costume and set piece was laid out for fans to see. There were also heaps of interactive sections that really brought the movie magic alive. We all enjoyed butterbeer and butterbeer ice cream. We would highly recommend this experience for all Harry Potter fans, and even for non-Harry Potter fans.

Now traveling with Mum and Liz we piled into the gutless wonder that was their hire car and headed for London. We saw Les Miserables musical from the nose bleed section but the its stirring musical numbers still hit us in the feels. We also visited the Borough markets, which was a smelting pot of cuisines and tasty treats. And all too soon, it was time to say goodbye to Mum and Aunty Liz, after a lovely time together. Yet little did we know that we wouldn’t be returning to work on Monday as planned…

TO BE CONTINUED