Split Personalities

After breakfast at Port Askaig Hotel, we aimed our tiny red Volkswagen "car hire" to Port Weymss and Portnahaven on the southern tip of The Rinns, traversing the west side of the island from north to south.

March 23, 2017  Our tiny red rental ride at Port Askaig.

As a general rule, we pencil our transportation for Scotland sojourns well in advance.  Not everything must be worked in meticulous detail.  Still, it is best to prearrange transportation.  Besides, you can normally do that easily enough on the internet in most cases.

Leaving transportation entirely to chance, however, is likely a road to disappointment, and will probably cost more in "stalled" travel time than simply scheduling your transportation links beforehand.   

Fixing transportation provides structure to the allotted  touring time, whether that may be shopping in a small village or walking to an old churchyard. 

It's easier to parcel out tour times, to synchronize.  This is particularly important if you have a busy or complicated itinerary...lots of things to do. With an assurance that transportation exists, and a smart phone with the timetables entered, a type of confidence exists...or at least there's less fret. 

This is not to say that off-the-cuff adventuring has no place.  When "playing it by ear" does work out, those occasions can be rewarding.  Still, a structural transportation plan helps avoid travel chaos...and disappointment.  Our trip to Port Weymss is a case in point...for both outcomes.

Boat Trips to Orsay allegedly available from Port Weymss

Ultimately, we could not do what we had hoped to do at Port Weymss...which was to arrange a tour boat to take us across to Orsay island (just offshore and tantalizingly close to Port Weymss).

March 23, 2017 Port Weymss, Islay

It was not that we did not try to fix the transport in advance online.  We did, and couldn't.  So, we decided to go to Port Weymss "and see" if a boat could be gotten.  Our physical presence was a vastly overestimated exercise.   It did absolutely nothing to make a tour boat across to Orsay manifest.

March 23, 2017  Portnahaven, Islay (Port Weymss' adjacent neighbors)

But the morning was beautiful nonetheless, enjoyable.  We substituted an unknown memorial above Port Weymss in lieu of Orsay.  We had no precise idea as to what the memorial was before hiking up to it.  It turned out to have a somber beauty in its own right; well worth the chance visit.

March 23, 2017  Celtic Cross monument between Port Weymss and Portnaven 

The unknown monument (listed on the Ordnance Survey only as "Meml") is a Celtic Cross, erected in memory of local men killed in service to their nation during World War Two.  This monument likely sees few walking visitors these days.  Sadly.  The view from the Cross is expansive.   

March 23, 2017 Eilean Mhic Coinnich behind the World War Two Celtic Cross

 
As to split personalities, Port Weymss and Portnahaven are tiny coastal villages, literally they are adjacent to each other...but divided.  Taken together collectively, both would only constitute a small community.  Bundling them as a single village, however, is apparently not copacetic.

In times past, these two neighboring villages did not exactly get along.  Too small for each to have its own church, they share one...with a proviso.  The two communities had separate doors.  One door for Portanaven folks  Another door for Port Weymss people. 

And, apparently each had "their" side of the church aisle as well.  Ne'er the twain shall meet. Perhaps not rising to the level of the Hatfields and McCoys spat in Appalachia, but a curiosity nevertheless.  It's odd how people divide.

Yet that Celtic Cross above both villages unifies, even so. 

Orsay Island off Port Weymss (Islay); Memorial above Weymss highlighted