We’re back from the wild! For various reasons we’ve come home a bit earlier than intended and are now on our 3 month European city break, in Liverpool, staying at our lovely 5 star self catering apartment on the Wirral (AKA Andy’s Mum and Dad’s). Here’s the first of a three part round up of the last leg of the British tour, Islay. Jura and Colonsay coming soon.

Just across from Kintyre, Islay is probably the biggest island we went to. We spent a fair amount of our time there in a B+B as Andy was ill and it rained everyday. It was strange being in a B+B when we’d been used to either tent or random hospitality from strangers. I realise this is how some people make a living, but the concept of having to pay someone £165 just to sleep in a bed for three nights and eat beans and scrambled eggs once a day seemed crazy. It must actually cost them all of about £5 per day. I don’t think they were really doing it to make ends meet as some places clearly do either, the house was well posh. AND they charged us £5 to do some washing! I wouldn’t mind if they’d have told us before were gong to add it the bill. Actually I would. Maybe we’ve just been spoilt as we’ve met so many kind people we weren’t ready for these money grabbing capitalists. Maybe we upset them. When she said I could use the kitchen to make some soup maybe she was expecting I’d just throw something in the microwave rather than start chopping leeks, potatoes and preparing a pile of wild mushrooms we’d gathered earlier in the day. I dunno. Anyway at least it was cosy. Actually it was a really nice B+B, 4 poster bed, use of a nice lounge and it was really kind of her to offer that we could use her kitchen, it’s just we missed being around interesting people who really did want to talk to us rather than just making polite small talk because they felt like they have to so you’d enjoy your stay and pay them.

Wild mushroom soup, made in B+B kitchen

So Islay, really good for Whisky (there’s at least 8 distilleries) and birds (over 200 species). Unfortunately I don’t really have an interest in either. Hmmm not going well so far is it? The island is a weird shape too, it’s at least a 20 mile trip between any two places, so really you have to drive. With petrol at £1.20 or more this was not a good thing. This is all getting rather depressing. I’ll probably also get some hate mail from Islay lovers too if I’m not careful so I’ll get back to the positives.

They have a brilliant community garden. It’s huge and appears to be really well looked after. They have a small shop to sell the produce and the schools are involved in some kind of a project to help them distribute the food, some kind of box scheme is being developed I think. The garden is in the grounds of Islay House and used to be a kitchen garden just to supply the house. However I think the owners got skint and it seems everything fell into disrepair. I guess the house has been sold on now and in 2005 the completely overgrown inaccessible garden was taken on as a community project. It’s hard to believe how much they have done in this short time, it looks so well established, has huge amounts of fruit and vegetables growing and two fantastic polytunnels full of squashes and tomatoes. We bought quite a bit of stuff from here. It kept us going for most of our time in Islay and a bit more for only about £6.

community garden shop

The other good thing is Islay Ales. They have a shop at the craft centre in Bridgend. You can try all the different beers they make, and also they do a small tour/talk if you ask. Very friendly. It was here I found out that Leann is Gaelic for Beer. How appropriate. I wonder if my parents knew this when they named me. Hello, my name is Beer. Brilliant.

Oh nearly forgot, the first night we were in Islay we decided to give wild camping a go. In 2003 the law in Scotland changed meaning everyone has a statutory right to camp anywhere in Scotland. There is a code of conduct including things like keep out of sight of houses, arrive late leave early, generally being considerate, but basically you can camp anywhere you like. It’s great. Well it would be if unlike us you don’t end up camping near to what turns out to be the main route from the ferry to the town. Oops. Huge Whisky lorries going past all night waking us up every hour probably contributed to the illness that then kept Andy in bed for the next 3 days. We’ve since had better luck with our choice of sites and it really is a great thing if you need to save a bit of cash, or go places with no camp sites (ie Colonsay or long distance hill walking). The only problem being that there obviously are no facilities. We probably made a suspiciously large number of visits to the public toilets on our trip, and didn’t have a proper shower for nearly 4 days at one point erlgh.

Here’s the recipe for the stew we made to celebrate our first ever night of wild camping on Islay made with some of the veg we’d bought from the community gardens.

Lentil and Spinach Stew

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 5 cloves garlic, crushed
• 175g red lentils
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 4 tsp stock powder
• 1 tbsp Henderson’s relish
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 medium carrot, cubed
• 250g chopped spinach
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1. Gently fry the onion until soft then add the cumin seeds and fry for 1 more minute.
2. Add the garlic, lentils, tomatoes, stock powder, hendersons and about 1 litre of water. Bring to the boil then simmer for about 20 minutes untilthe lentils are falling apart.
3. Add the spinach and carrots and cook for a further 15 minutes until the carrots are soft.
4. Serve with rice or bulgar wheat.

You might notice from the picture we’d also added courgette to it this time, but that was just because we’d been given it at the gardens, normally this stew doesn’t have courgette in. It doesn’t really matter, it’s lovely either way.