Puffin Trip with the Jones’

A natural clash of teenager propensity to slow wakeups and a boat timetabled for a respectable kick off led to a speed walk that might rival a school dash for registration. “No worries we’ll easy make it”.

The Jones’ (our Sheffield , Bannerdale neighbours) were holidaying on Mull & had a puffin boat trip planned. We were invited (over a Tuesday tea) to join them on the trip. We got a text from Jude, shortly after we started walking, to say the boat had left 15mins early their end so we made a final push for the jetty at Kilchoan.

It was lovely to see friends and sail on the same boat this time!

We settled into enjoying our trip out towards two islands. Staffa for the rocks and Lunga for the puffins.

Giants once used the formations as a bridge between Ireland (giants causeway) and Scotland (Staffa) so they say. The basalt columns being very similar in nature with hexagon and pentagon forms.

The name Staffa is allegedly from the vikings as the almost log life columns reminded the of their tree columns used for homes.

The cave known as Fingal’s cave is known both for it’s mystical rock formations and it’s amazing acoustics as attested by Mendelssohn, who wrote an overture inspired by the echos.

A pod.. not of the ‘I’ kind, more of the eye catching kind suddenly appeared out of nowhere and headed straight for our boat to play in the water froth.

An amazing show of fun and agility as they raced the boat and played under and round us.

An amazing number of puffins were seen within moments of climbing the hill. They seemed to ignore the humans but defended their own burrows from other intruders more zealously.

We were so close that even the iPhones could take good shots. Dad quickly got fascinated and lost.. missing lunch but enjoying the photo opportunities of the natives to these cliff faces.

Puffins building burrows, razors sunning themselves, gannets making a lot of noise. Then there were others less obvious at first in the noise but great to see.

We saw Turns, Shags and Manx Shearwater too. Shags hid nesting under large rocky outcrops. The Manx flew overhead.. ultimately the Puffins stole the show.