You cannot live for ever in a distillery. Okay, you can’t live forever anywhere but for us our stay on the Isle of Raasay was over. It had been wonderful. Pat had even got a golden eagle for her bird list and I got some sheds and some drams. Inevitably however we were on the road again … or rather on the boat again back to Skye. And once again we were having to drive directly to another ferry to take us onward to the Outer Hebrides. Once again, like all well trained ferry travelers, we arrived at the ferry terminal at Uig with time to spare and, of course, we thought to continue our sconological research.

One problem with traveling in the north of Scotland in March is that most things don’t open until April. And so it was with Uig. All the cafés and restaurants were closed. Eventually we had to settle on the local petrol station simply because it was actually open. It didn’t look promising from the outside and that impression wasn’t changed much inside. On the upside the chap running the place was wonderfully friendly and prepared us some very good cheese and ham toasties. He didn’t have any scones but, seeing our disappointment, he insisted we have a home-baked doughnut … a peanut butter and jam doughnut to be precise!

Alternatives

It was pretty awful. We show you a picture not so that you can add it to your knowledge of scones but simply to let you see the lengths we go to on your behalf. This doughnut will be forever known as the ‘Uig scone’ and joins the Buckhaven scone and the Winkel scone in an exclusive club of enforced substitutes. And no, even though Pat has great black backed gulls, herring gulls and black headed gulls on her list, she did not add this hungry one.

Numpties

While we munched our doughnuts, however, we did manage to catch up with the news. Probably a mistake because, of course, it’s the same old same old. The media seem to be saying “the next few days will be critical for the UK” … precisely what they have been saying every day for the past six months! Surely there cannot be anyone left in Scotland of sound mind who still wants their country to be governed by this shower of numpties in Westminster. Surely not? Nicola Sturgeon seems like the only consistent voice of sanity in the whole sorry affair.

We caught the ferry and set off in the teeth of a force 7 gale into the Minch heading for Tarbert on the Isle of Harris.

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ps:  Isn’t it just typical! While we were tucking into a peanut butter and jam doughnut in rain soaked windswept Uig we received this picture.   It’s of one of our Aussie friends living the life of reilly on the Queen Marry 2 in the middle of the Indian Ocean. All our Aussie friends seem to live the life of reilly so we should not have been surprised. No luxury liner for us, just a CalMac ferry. Apparently the service and the scone were first class. At least they seem to have got the jam on first … there’s hope yet for these Aussie types. So even though we have not tested these scones personally, all you sconeys contemplating a cruise on the QM2 can add this snippet to your sconological databases. Thanks to M&J, enjoy the rest of your holiday … don’t worry about us on our wee boat.