Jura is great. Not sure what it is, it just has a tense yet calm atmosphere about it. Perhaps it was anticipation of knowing we were going to visit the place Orwell chose to write 1984 and also the site of Bill Drummond and the KLF’s burning of £1 million that led to me feeling pretty inspired by the place. We’d been staring longingly over from Islay for the last 4 days at the “Paps”, the aptly named breast shaped mountains that dominate the landscape and ended up leaving a day early to get to them. They must have called us over. Sneaky things really as they disappeared the day we got there into the descended clouds that didn’t clear again til we left. Very cheeky.

It’s described as one of the last great wildernesses. It’s a fair size, yet only has 200 inhabitants who are outnumbered 25:1 by deer. There’s just the one road, running across the bottom and up the east of the island and nowhere else. If you wanted to go anywhere else you’d have to walk over rough ground. It’s not like the peak district, there’s no paths or styles, you just make your own way and will most likely get eaten alive by ticks if you do. Given all this it’s amazingly quiet and peaceful. The bay by the main (only) town (1 hotel, 1 shop and a distillery) is quite protected by surrounding land so the waters are really still. If you stop walking you realise the only sounds you’ve been hearing are your rustling jacket and footsteps. Quite eerie. At one point while I was wandering around on my own I started feeling like I was living in an episode of Twin Peaks. The mist over the water, the  hotel, the steam from the whisky factory, I though Bob was going to come and get me.

The world’s third largest whirlpool the Corryvrekan can be seen off the top coast of the island. We did attempt to go, but only realised when the road suddenly stopped that it was still at least a 6 mile trek to the top of the island to see it and we were totally unprepared for it. An excuse to go again. It would make a great weekend, you can drive up to the end of the road then set off with your camping gear, you’d pass by George Orwell’s house on the way and there are big cave systems near the whirlpool you can stay the night in.

One big plus about he place is that the campsite is free! Woop! The Jura Hotel very kindly let you camp in their garden, there’s shower and laundry facilities and it’s right on the coast. Beautiful. They just ask for a donation which goes to a local charity.

What’s that? You thought this was a food blog not a travel guide? Erm… oh yeah we had shaggy ink cap pizzas for dinner, well sort of it was a poor man’s pizza (cheese on toast with tomato base and other toppings). I’d found a clump of about 5 of them by the path near the community gardens in Islay, so we picked them and cooked them up for our dinner when we arrived. They were ok. Aparently they make nice soup, will give that a go next time we find some.

ink caps

ink caps on toast