RET and what it means for the Caravanner, the Motor Caravanner, and the Islands

On 26th October 2015, RET was rolled out across the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry network in Scotland.

What's RET then? I'm glad you asked. It's Road Equivalent Tariff, that's what it is. The blurb says that it's something to do with trying to equate the cost of taking the ferry with driving the same distance. The simple reality is that the fares have tumbled, in some cases dramatically so.

RET is not new. It has been going for a while on a few of the 'long haul' routes like Barra, Tiree, and Lewis. Arran joined the Club recently. Now all the islands, and INTER island routes, will benefit from RET.

So what does this mean to the caravanner, and the motor caravanner?

Let's look at a three comparisons. We'll look at the popular route to the Isle of Mull, the hop over to the Isle of Raasay, and the link between the Isle of Harris and North Uist. The comparison fares are for my personal circumstances, so that is a 4x4 truck, an 8m caravan, and one adult:

MULL: Oban to Craignure standard return
WAS:  £267.30
NOW: £71.90


RAASAY: Sconser to Raasay standard return
WAS: £79.60
NOW: £34.20

HARRIS to NORTH UIST: Leverburgh to Berneray standard single
WAS: £94.00
NOW: £36.35

So looking at the Mull crossing, that is a WHOPPING £195.40 reduction in the fare. The ferry crossing to Mull with a caravan will cost about 30% of the 2015 price in 2016. WOW!

The inter-island routes also open up the possibility of affordable day trips between islands. Last year I couldn't believe that to take just my motorbike and myself from North Uist to Harris for the day (for a Temple Cafe or Skoon Art Cafe fix) was going to cost £42.75 (5-day return). In 2016 the same return will cost me £20.10.

This is terrific news for caravanners, motor caravanners, motorists, bikers, and of course for the islanders themselves.

HOWEVER!

There is always a but. And in the interests of fairness to all, let's talk about that 'but'.

When RET was rolled out to the likes of Barra and Tiree a few years back, the fares tumbled in a similarly dramatic fashion. Tourers, especially camper vans that travel for the same price as a solo car, headed for the islands in their droves.

The only problem was, neither Barra nor Tiree was set up to accept this amount of tourers. Folks would wild camp around the islands. Beforehand, as there were only one or two campers, it was never a problem. Suddenly, swathes of heavy vehicles and caravans were blotting the landscape and, more importantly, destroying it. Machair is fragile, and it wasn't long before erosion set in.

After a bit of an uncomfortable transition period, Tiree and Barra now welcome more caravans and motor caravans than ever before, thanks to a new network of camping-crofts and campsites. Wild camping has effectively been stopped.

There are some wonderful sites on Mull - click on 'Mull' in the word jumble to the right to see where I stayed in 2012. However, even in 2012 the small road between Craignure and Tobermory was already very busy. I wonder how it's going to cope. But I implore the responsible camper to use the official sites wherever possible, and spend that money you saved on the ferry fare on the island. £195 can more than cover your site fees and industrial quantities of cake for an entire week.

if you've never visited the beautiful Scottish Islands and have always fancied it, then wait no more. 2016 really is the year to make it happen. Enjoy.

Tùras math dhuibh.  

 

Mull Part 2 - Peace, Puffins, and Pasta

Mull Part 2 - May 2012


On my way to Mull, I had bumped into some friends in Oban who were heading to the distilleries of Islay. I was tempted to join them, but the £400 return ferry fare (with the 'van) was a serious source of dissuasion.

'Go to Staffa! It's amazing!' said one of my friends, so I booked myself and Dougal on a trip from Tobermory.

What an outstanding day.

Dougal wasn't keen on the high-speed catamaran from Tobermory (note to self: Dogs don't like cats) but it meant that we got to the island of Lunga in a little over an hour. Here, we had to scramble ashore via a wobbly pontoon and a very rocky beach - not for the infirm or for any dog that is non-portable.

Dougal had to remain on his lead for the duration, and he's a calm and quiet dog so he was no problem. But I would NEVER have taken my parent's dobermann. Not only is he too big and gangly to carry ashore, but he barks at birds. And had he done that on Lunga, I think we would have been booted straight back onto the boat. Because Lunga is all about birds. Especially Puffins. And I LOVE PUFFINS!

These comical creatures are incredibly bold, as most of their human contact is with respectful bird watchers.

 

Next port of call was the island of Staffa, and Fingal's Cave where Mendelssohn was inspired to write his Hebridean Overture. The island sits on amazing basalt columns, related to the Giant's Causeway across the water.

 

In all, an brilliant day. Highly recommended. Although I think next time we will take a slower boat the shorter distance from Fionnphort or Ulva Ferry.




Part of my remit when doing a touring feature is to try out the local hostelries on behalf of the magazine's readers. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it. And no, it's not expensed.

I had my eye on an Italian restaurant in Salen called Mediterranea, and the nice lady in the tourist office told me of a new site that had just opened up nearby.

Only trouble was, I couldn't find this new site. So I continued along the road with Airstream in tow, and happened upon a remote site called Killiechronan Campsite.

Oh my goodness, WHAT a find!

Quite simply, an amazing spot. AND it turned out to be one of the top places to spot Sea Eagles, as I soon found out when the telescope-tweaking twitchers turned up en masse. Well, there was about 10 of them, but that's a lot for Mull.

My camping fees at Killiechronan were £4 per night. That's right, £4 for THAT view! The main downside was the long walk to the loos and water tap (no showers) and the fact that there was no chemical loo disposal point, meaning that your stay is governed by the capacity of your black water tank. Unless, of course, you spend a lot of time running to and fro the facilities.

Pitched up, it was time to head back to Salen to try the Mediterranea restaurant.

Being a solo diner, I am VERY sensitive to good or bad service. When I saw how busy the restaurant was and the fact that there was only one very busy lady rushing around doing everything front-of-house, my heart sank.

But I need not have worried. The service was impeccable and friendly, despite the full house. And as for the food... WONDERFUL! Definitely recommended.

From Killiechronan it was a short drive to Ulva Ferry and the one minute boat trip to the island of Ulva.

Maybe the fantastic weather helped, but what an amazing little island. The ferry ride, the nose around 'Sheila's Cottage' which is presented as it would have been used a generation ago, the pretty three-mile walk, and the delicious meal in The Boathouse Cafe at the end of it…. all in all an absolutely perfect day. Ulva is now indelibly scored into my heart like so many other Hebridean islands.

 

Such a feeling of peace and tranquility eluded me when visiting the island of Iona a couple of days later. We had left Killiechronan and headed to Fidden Farm Campsite near Fionnphort on the South West Peninsula of the island. Gung-ho caravanner that I can be, I decided on using the little 'B' roads to get there.

Oh dear. We made it intact and were rewarded with some stunning scenery, but it was a bit of an ordeal. Passing places are few and far between, and some parts of the road are not exactly caravan-friendly. Top Tip: Stick to the A roads in Mull.

But getting back to Iona. It's an important place to the Christian Pilgrim, as it is the place that St Columba first arrived when bringing Christianity to Scotland and the North of England. As such, Iona is full of Pious Pilgrims and bored students on field trips. 'Trip Buddies' that I kept bumping into assured me that Iona was a delightful place away from the busy-ness of the ferry port and Abbey, but it was too late in the day for Dougal and I to embark on a marathon walk.

Instead, we headed back to Fidden Farm, lit the fire in the firepit, and took in the amazing sunset. Now THIS is what we come to the Hebrides for!

Mull. A Must-Do.

Mull it Over

May 2012


After the Airstream weekend in Dorset, I had a few weeks off. Where to go? Somewhere close by like Pembrokeshire or North Devon? You know, the kind of places where normal people would head to from Dorset?

Nope. I needed my Hebrides. So off we went on our long, long journey north.

In the meantime, one of my esteemed editors had decided that I'd be the best person to write a 'seaside special' about Tobermory in Mull, as I was THE Hebridean caravanner.

Slight problem with that. I'd never been to Mull, let alone Tobermory.

But now, I had an excuse.

I'm proud of the fact that I have never, ever written about somewhere I haven't been myself, so it was my pleasure to swing by Mull on the way to somewhere more remote.

Given my experience in Cornwall, I wasn't expecting great things from Tobermory. I imagined a rip-off joint epitomising everything I dislike about the UK Tourist Trap.

How utterly, utterly wrong I was. Tobermory, indeed the entire Isle of Mull, was an absolute delight. It was oodles better than I had dared to hope. Not as remote, quiet, or treeless as the Outer Hebrides, but a wonderful place all the same.

The trip started off in Craignure, Mull's principle ferry port, where I had my first ever veggie Haggis, neaps, and tatties courtesy of the friendly Craignure Inn. Yum!

As is often the case in the Hebrides, you end up seeing the same people over and over again. A lovely Scottish lady I'd met on the ferry in the doggy area crossed my path a couple more times during my stay in Craignure. Commenting on the wet and pretty miserable weather using local dialect she said: 'Aye, it's a bit dree!' Or maybe it's spelt draigh? But it's pronounced 'dree'. And it can only be dree in Scotland.

Sniffing about the Tourist Info centre in Craignure, I realised that my four days in Mull was never going to be enough, and I rebooked my ferry crossing so that I could stay a week. And I was straight on the phone to the Esteemed Editor: 'Never mind two pages! This place deserves a mega-spread!' Fortunately he trusted me enough to commission a larger feature on Mull there and then, and I'm pretty sure that nobody was disappointed with the results.

Tobermory is a delight. An absolute delight. I really, really, really liked it.

It was there I saw that the mobile cinema (in a lorry!) was visiting, and on the Friday would be showing a film I'd always wanted to see - Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. So I decided to go.

Beforehand I took a tour of the Tobermory distillery - it was OK, but nothing really to shout about. On it, I met a lovely German couple, Frank and Ciara. Frank was a fellow photographer with the latest version of my camera, so we enjoyed a nice chat.

The cinema experience in the truck was amazing. No trailers before the film but as everybody knew everybody else the auditorium was alive with the sound of animated chatter. I loved the film, and all through it the lady next to me whom I had never before met kept offering me wine gums. Have I mentioned how much I love the Hebrides?

As I left the mobile cinema on a high, I noticed what a beautiful evening it was. I grabbed my camera and tripod from the car, went to the corner of the harbour wall to do some night shots, and guess who was there? Yup, Frank, my new friend.

Anyone who has done night photography will know just how much hanging around is involved waiting for super-long exposures, so it was nice to chat and bounce ideas off each other as we waited for our shutters to close. A total coincidence, and the perfect end to a wonderful evening.