A wonderful day!

I've just spent at least half an hour writing a learned (!) account of my day out and somehow have lost the lot! I will try to do it all again later on - I must go and make my dinner - but in the meantime, here's a picture of the broch known as Tirefour Castle on the island of Lismore .

Here it is again, or something like it!
 
I’d looked at the forecast a couple of days ago and today seemed to promise be a sunny, dry one, so I decided to pop across to the island of Lismore, a short ferry ride away from Oban. It was to be a beautiful day, but one with three strange coincidences, the first one happening soon after boarding the ferry at 11  this morning. I got talking to a couple on holiday who asked where in Oban I lived – to our mutual surprise they were renting a house just along the road from ours, somewhere I’d had something to do with though I won’t go into that here.!
 
Lismore is a particularly special island – a limestone anomaly in a country where limestone isn’t common. The name means ‘The Great Garden’, as it’s very fertile due to the limestone in the soil. Apparently when the land masses on either side of the Great Glen were moving alongside each other, the action forced up a lump of limestone from 1km down which became Lismore. It has a great deal of history attached to it too, but too much to talk about here.
 
After the 55 minute journey I decided to walk northwards along the coast to Tirefour Castle, as the Iron Age broch is called. A broch is a defensive dwelling, but that description will have to do for now. I missed the indistinct path at one point, and ended up wet and muddy, but so what, the sun was shining, it was warm enough to walk in shirtsleeves, so who cared! Two weeks ago I would have been unable to do such a walk on very uneven ground, but thanks to the wonders of the anti-inflammatory drug Naproxen, it was no trouble at all! I had my picnic lunch on top of what remains of the broch and set off back to the ferry. The return journey was better, apart from the time when I mistook the lump of mud posing as a rock for a rock!
 
The second coincidence came as I walked through the small settlement of Achnacroish.  I passed the time of day with a lady tending her garden and commented on her flowering Clematis armandii, as one does! It turned out that she was the sister of a man whom I’d known when I worked at Ross Priory, near Gartocharn on Loch Lomond. He’d worked at Edinburgh Botanics and had been on a plant hunting trip to Nepal. Their mother had a lovely garden in Gartocharn with some very unusual plants . . .
 
The third coincidence came to pass only five minutes later, as I walked down the ramp on to the ferry. Off the boat came the man who had worked as my under-gardener at Ross Priory 30 years ago! Twice in five minutes?
 
I arrived home in time to enjoy a cuppa out on the deck before the sun disappeared behind the trees, fading away in a sea of pink stripes! All I have to do now is to pick a picture to Blip out of the 179 I took today! This is the broch through a long lens, with a snowy Ben Nevis in the background. A perfect day.

PS I'll put a few more pictures on Flickr here.