Travel Journal March 29, 1999
A run down the coast.

Jura

The weather today was vastly improved; You could even see Jura's hilltops, which are rarely visible. The three main hills are called "The Three Paps".

Driving along Jura's road, I got further than I did the day before.

A herd of cattle blocking the road. I was able to ease the car through the first group (although one big cow decided to make a big, smelly cow pie right in front of the car), but at the second such roadblock I decided to call it quits.

On the way back I spotted an interesting vehicle, which probably would have been a lot more useful than my Vauxhall Astra. (Which happens to be equivalent to a General Motors Opal, I believe.)

A plantation forest.

Here's an example of one of the clearcut sections.

A good shot of the three Paps.

At port Askaig, they had a very powerful and expensive lifeboat.

I should note that in the U.K. the lifeboats are all manned by volunteers, and the equipment is paid for by charity. I've seen people in railway stations asking for donations.

What I find ironic about this is that in a country where the government attempts to do so much, the one thing that you would expect the government to do is actually handled by a community of volunteers. As one American commented "That's probably why it works."

Later that evening, I made a dash down to Glasgow. I saw snippets of Loch Lomond, but didn't spend very long as I was a) running out of petrol in an area where all of the petrol stations were either boarded up or closed for the weekend, and b) getting kind of anxious to move on towards Ireland.