Inner Hebrides

15 April doesn't mark anything in this 12 months of frugality and if I'm not careful it could turn into something of the complete opposite. Having spent last week doing a whistlestop tour of all things Inner Hebridean, I feel I could have stayed up there and started my little trip six months early (but with less than half of the funds needed as I still need to earn another £8k or so before I can go!!). Luckily I did not do a runner whilst up there.
There aren't many great things about being the materialistic daughter of a true scotsman, but if he also happens to be a pilot, recently semi-retired, who has realised he doesn't have to do much more saving now there's a pension to be spent, who am I to stand in his way?
So Captain Carnegie and myself booked out the 4-seater Cherokee from the Britannia Flying club, which gives subsidised flying to its employees meaning we can go up to Scotland and back for less than the train fare. It was fantastic, and my travel sickness didn't kick in til the journey home, where dad informed if I was going to be sick, that my plan of channelling it down air vent on my door was a bad one as he could reach over and reverse the direction of the vent and blow it back in my face. For a laugh.

Anyway, fun and games aside, we left Cranfield and got up to Islay for mid afternoon. Dad had a free landing voucher from Flight Magazine, so he excitedly raced up to the control tower to book in. They didn't seem that annoyed, which in turn slightly annoyed Capt C, so to cheer him up I took a picture of him outside Islay International terminal (pic to be added!)

Then we went over to Colonsay, and finally landed on this tiny island after years of wanting to but not being able to. The reason being that the tiny airstrip has been tarmacced, with EU money, as part of some bonkers plan by the local council which they didn't research properly and having spent several million on tarmaccing this and other tiny airstrips on other islands, they now realise it is still too short for the air ambulance to land, let alone commercial flights. So it is a disaster for just about everyone except me and my dad, who could finally land on the fresh tarmac and marvel at Colonsay International terminal. A very nice shed of Swedish influence.

Colonsay was amazing, great sheep, Lovely meal in the Colonsay Hotel and amazing B&B called The Hannahs. Highly recommended! We left Colonsay the following morning, quickly finding out just how short the runway was, and narrowly missing the sea at the end of it. Captain C was naturally unflappable but I was feeling less centred.

Next stop Isle of Mull, where we had been many times before. The landing strip at Mull is grass but extremely well kept and we zoomed in to land with the sea hemming us in to the right. The air up here is so clear that everything seems so much brigher. The sea, the grass, the sheep...

After securing the Cherokee we headed to Tobermory, social centre and hub of all things on Mull. Nothing had changed, it was as great as ever. We booked into the Harbour B&B and went for a walk to find a solar powered lighthouse round the coast that I had read about. That evening we hit the MishNish for a pint or two before dinner, and shared a bag of chips from the Routier awarded van on the harbour front (www.silverswift.co.uk/van.htm). For dinner we decided on a new restaurant called Schmooze. Everything about it seemed wrong, but it was the only place that wasn't freezing and actually had people in it. The decor was such that it could have been orchestrated by an 80s yuppie who fell into a coma before Black Wednesday and recently awoke, realising his dream yet not realising a decade and a half has passed since people have paintings of wine bottles and sparkling martinis on black backgrounds hung on the walls. The ceiling flashed constantly, festooned with acres of white Xmas lights, and the waitress was made to wear a silver mesh tie to go with her black shirt that had "Scmooze" written on the back in diamante studs. But despite all this, the food was absolutely brilliant. We left, blinking and stumbling into the night to retire to the B&B.

We left the next morning, got airborne and headed for Oban on the mainland to pick up some fuel. From there we headed to the East Coast to Dundee, where we pitched up and went into Angus to see family and visit the amazing But 'n' Ben fish restaurant at Auchmithie. It's soooo good there and the dessert trolley really is something from another world.

The next day we flew out of Dundee and headed back to Cranfield, Beds, laden with haggis, tablet and some interesting chutney from The Hannahs proprietors (thehannahsbandb@aol.com ), who have recently started producing Colonsay Naturally, which include Mushroom Ketchup and Tomato, Apple and Nettle Chutney. Highly recommended too!

Grenada, West Indies

30 March 2007 marks 6 months of self-imposed social exile and saving/paying off (£4.5k down since September - a break highly needed (this was the excuse I told myself). I was bored, had 3 weeks til my next reflexology exam, and my recruitment agency had no work lined up for me for the next week. Whilst looking on www.Travelzoo.co.uk scouring the deals for a last minute European city break, I noticed a price for Granada that seemed quite high for Spain at £160. I clicked to have a look, and it was Grenada in the West Indies! Wanderlust took over my index finger as I pressed the "hell yeah" button and I booked the flight leaving Gatwick in less than 24 hrs. I have been good and sensible for 6 months, a temporary blip was not only scheduled but inevitable.

I ended up, via Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, finding www.cabier-vision.com, a little lodge run by a crazy Austrian couple and very affordable. On the southeast edge of the island, it is away from any tourist areas and for the whole week the only tourists I saw were at a restaurant near the airport before the flight home. Cabier has a lovely little beach cove right next to the rooms, which is mostly deserted so you can have it to yourself. This is mainly due to the road to Cabier being so bad that you need 4WD to get there so most of the locals give it a wide berth. .

In retrospect going to Cabier Lodge saved my life. I couldn't get money out for the first 4 days of arriving on Grenada. After a couple of highly expensive phone calls to UK customer service on my mobile it was revealed that Barclays had cancelled my card as they thought it was fraudulent activity abroad. This meant when I got in the shared taxi to Cabier from outside the airport, I had no way of paying my way. Luckily it was a shared taxi and we were all going to the same place and the other travellers covered me. Then when I got there I found out everything at Cabier was on a tab so I kept racking it up, presuming the next day I could actually get some money out to pay for everything (room included)... I was relaxing into the Caribbean way of life so well, I was in my element with reggae blasting out of every radio/shop/car on the island, and the stresses of life had melted away. Then on the 4th evening, whilst putting another rum punch on my tab and down my gullet whilst reclining on the terrace overlooking the moonlit bay at Cabier to the sounds of Jimmy Cliff, the terrible realisation hit that maybe I didn't have enough funds in the bank which was why I wasn't getting any money out. Cold sweats prevailed that evening's sleep, quite a rare thing as there was no air con and the only way to get to sleep every other night was by wetting the bedsheet under the cold tap and then wrapping myself in it, without pulling the mosquito net down.

Luckily the ATM finally belched some Eastern Caribbean dollars into my sweaty and desperate palms on the 5th day and I set about buying anything I could as it was such an alien feeling, actually exchanging money for objects. I ended with some very poor fake D&G sunglasses from a crap shop in Grenville next to the bank, as I had broken mine on the way to the airport and had been squinting since I got there. I cherished the new ones for at least an hour until I realised they made everything brighter when looking through them. Ho hum, such is life...

It was a great week, nay stupendous, and also very educational. I went to a nutmeg factory, a cocoa processing plant, a rainforest, but the Grenada Chocolate Company was shut for refurbishment (argh!). I got in some amazing beaches at La Sagesse, Grand Anse and a private bay by sicilian/Caribbean restaurant La Luna whose marvellous Sicilian chef gave us a free plate of parma ham to start with and some handrolled truffles for dessert (being in a group of three scantily clad girls had nothing to do with this I like to think). I did miss Buju Banton playing at Moonlight City in Grenville on the saturday night, which I would have loved to attend. An old rasta called Terence fishing at the Cabier Lodge beach told me about this one as he was going down too (as were most Grenadian residents it seemed!). But to make up for it I went to the island of Carriacou the next day and swam on Paradise Beach, met Banana Joe who ran a "brunch bar" on the beach but was too stoned to get out of his hammock to do anything except giggle and wave, and decided that I really should make an effort to move here at some time in the near future...