Scotland Travel Blog June 09

"Meeting Puffins on Staffa"

Aurelia's turn to do the diary this month and the big event for me in June was a visit from my Parents who have only been in Scotland 3 times during my 7 years here.

Having my Parents over meant that I could use them as Guinea Pigs to bounce our tour ideas off and to test their reactions to some of our favourite attractions and restaurants.

Fortunately, their visit coincided with a trip that we had been planning for several months as we wanted to develop some new day trips around Aberdeenshire and visit new B&Bs on Mull.

Mike wound up as the chauffeur for the trip and I think he found it a bit of a challenge keeping us on schedule whilst also accommodating my Mum's fascination with photographing every pheasant that we passed! Mike reckons my Mum was being employed by the Queen to conduct a census of all the pheasants in Royal Deeside so that she knows how many are left for her to shoot.

On the subject of birds, one of the highlights of our tour was a boat trip to Staffa to see Puffins. Mike had done this before so he went off to explore beaches around Fionnphort on Mull (at least that's what he said he was doing, but I suspect he was trying to find a beach in the bar at the Keel Inn).

Back to the boat trip... and Staffa was brilliant! Fingal's Cave is truly breathtaking and the Puffins are incredibly cute. We wandered all round the island looking for their nesting places, but then we found a flock of them swarming around some other visitors. Apparently the trick with attracting Puffins is to stand still. When they see humans they flock around them because they know that they are safe from attacking seagulls when they stay close to people. If only we had known this earlier we would have saved ourselves a walk around the island.