Although I am a car and motor-racing enthusiast – and have been lucky enough to drive nearly all the classic cars we offer for hire – I also really enjoy a kind of liberation when part of a holiday involves no car travel at all.

This is a theme we will be developing further for 2009, with a number of new holiday options where you can “leave your car behind”, yet still be independent. Last month we had a fabulous weekend on exactly this basis. OK, we did drive to Oban (could have taken the train or a bus from Glasgow) but we parked up on the Friday afternoon and did not return to the car until Monday morning.

Our destination was the island of Colonsay, with a resident population of around 100, over two hours by ferry from Oban, and an hour from Islay, this is one of the more remote Hebridean islands. We have been there before but just as day trippers from Islay, so his time we were going to stay over. After sampling one of the island’s beers ( yes they do have a micro brewery! ) in the bar on the ferry to get us in the mood, we both felt a sense of adventure, of heading somewhere new and different. The arrival at Scalasaig (the “port” – well slipway) I was reminded of my Greek island-hopping past, when the arrival of the daily ferry was the big event, with, it seemed, most of the island down by the port, seeing who was coming and going, greeting friends and offering strangers rooms to rent. I was delighted even to see the manager of the hotel there with his 4WD to bring guests’ bags up the hill. Heather, mind you, decided we were fit enough to carry our own, so we waved to him and set off. Alright it was only about 5 minutes, but still..

So there we were, half an hour later, sitting down to dinner, feeling refreshed and excited about the weekend ahead, already picking up the special vibes of a remote island community, yet just a few hours after leaving the city lights of Glasgow.

We spent the next two days walking all over, exploring just a small number of the beaches – there is definitely one for every day of the week – getting soaked one day, and paddling on the sea the next, eating great food, enjoying a few local beers and generally chilling.

And the end result? Watch out for Colonsay featuring heavily in our 2009 holiday programme..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.