Islay and Falkirk, Scotland: we might be (whisky and canal) nerds

When we were planning this trip to the UK, one of the places that Zach was interested in visiting was the island of Islay (pronounced “eye – la”) off the west coast of Scotland, where (arguably) the best whisky in Scotland is produced. Zach first got interested in whisky back when he was working at IBM, where his friend Michael used to conduct “Whisky School” at his house parties; he has continued to develop his taste and preferences since then. I (Jennifer) don’t drink alcohol at all, but I usually enjoy factory tours and didn’t know much about whisky production, and when we looked into Islay, we discovered that besides being a haven for whisky nerds, it was also very pretty and a good place for hiking and bird watching.

So after our hike of the Rob Roy Way, we took a train from Pitlochry to Glasgow and a bus to the Glasgow airport, where we picked up a rental car and drove to the Islay ferry. Along the way we spent the night in Arrochar, at the head of Loch Long, where we were confused: Loch Long is definitely a salt-water inlet and not a lake like the various lochs that we passed on the Rob Roy portion of the trip. But we learned that that the Scottish word “loch” can either refer to a fresh-water lake or a long, narrow sea inlet (known as a fjord in other places).

We rented the car with me as the driver, since Zach planned to be tasting whisky. The driving was challenging:

• Driving on the left means that your sense of the size of the car is backwards (which was surprisingly difficult to overcome).
• The roads in Scotland are very narrow, even for a small car, and very curvy. Many were one lane with pullouts to pass incoming vehicles (sometimes you had to back up when a car came to reach the nearest pullout).
• The car had a 6 speed manual transmission, and I frequently had trouble finding the right gears, such as shifting into 4th instead of 2nd gear. It also had a very annoying foot rest that kept partially blocking me from pushing in the clutch, but somehow I managed not to stall the car out.

All of this meant that the first few days, every oncoming car, and especially the large trucks and buses, resulted in a moment of panic. But by the time we returned the car I was a lot more comfortable with the driving, and the worst that happened was hitting some potholes, delaying other drivers, entertaining bystanders by trying to park, and once scraping a wheel rim on a curb (which the rental company didn’t charge us for).

Here are some photos of our time on Islay.

On our third afternoon on Islay, we made our way back to Port Askaig, took the ferry back to what Islay residents call the “mainland” (meaning Scotland — on a bigger island at least?), and drove a short distance to our hotel for that night. By then we had decided that we were actually canal nerds, meaning that we needed to spend our last two days in Falkirk, home of the Falkirk Wheel; so we drove up there the next morning; here are some photos.

Getting home was another adventure (and not the good kind!). It started when we received a text message at 2 AM from KLM the day we were supposed to leave, informing us that our flight out of Glasgow that afternoon was cancelled. They didn’t immediately rebook us on another flight, and when we tried to rebook using the Delta app, it wanted to charge us about $200 each (it should have been free due to the cancellation). So we called Delta, and the agent said he couldn’t help us because the cancelled flight was on their partner airline KLM. Then we tried to call KLM, but their US office (that was the number we had) was closed at that time of day. Humph!

At that point, we decided our best bet would be to get up and head to the airport in time to catch the earlier flight we had found. This turned out to be a poor decision, because Delta had no one in Glasgow at all and the one KLM agent there was only sporadically at the check-in desk and didn’t help us when we finally talked to her. Eventually, after also calling KLM’s Netherlands office and being told they couldn’t help us because we had booked the flight through Delta, KLM booked us a new flight on Iceland Air and sent us a text message with the flight information, which is how we got home (minus earning Delta miles, having our choice of seats, being served free snacks and drinks, and using the free onboard WiFi). In retrospect, it would have been better to stay in our hotel room until we were either rebooked automatically or found a Delta agent who could help us, and getting more sleep. We could possibly pursue some compensation from Delta or KLM over this; however, we think it’s unlikely they would give us enough to make it worthwhile, since our arrival time was close to our original schedule. But it sure was annoying that neither of the airlines involved would help us, and both of them said we needed to call the other one for assistance.

We did get home in the end (we will spare you a full description of the horror that is the Sea-Tac Airport Customs Line, since we did make our connection there), and a nice Iceland Air agent in Reykjavik even got us seats together on the Seattle flight without charging us their usual seat fee (Iceland Air is the type of airline that charges for every little thing). We also now have all of our luggage (Zach’s took a 2-day side trip to Detroit, after we went through customs in Seattle).

So, as we finish up this last entry in our UK 2026 trip blog, we are looking forward to catching up with friends and family, enjoying the garden, and hiking, cycling, and backpacking around here this summer. The garden is weedy and the grass in the back yard was tall until Zach attacked it with the mower, but the raspberries are yummy, all of the vegetable plants Jennifer planted just before we left survived, and there were even a few strawberries left (it looks like our neighbors followed our suggestion and picked them, so at least someone enjoyed them). We don’t have our next adventure planned yet, but stay tuned!

One final thought: travel in the UK is expensive, compared to most other places we’ve been. We didn’t go out of our way to seek out the absolute cheapest possible food, lodging, or experiences, and using a company to handle the Rob Roy hike portion definitely added to the cost (booking the lodging ourselves for four people would have been difficult, however, as the options in the small towns it passes through are very limited). The trip ended up at an average of about $200 per person per day, including the plane tickets, which was comparable to our Alaska trip two years ago, and much more expensive than Spain and Portugal last year.