Apologies for missing this post, which should have come first in the Luing series as it sets the context for the visit. Never mind, better late than never!
Last year I took a working trip up to Luing in Scotland with my good friend Brendan, who gathers material for his large scale paintings on such trips. We’ve been doing these trips for the past few years and we both get a wealth of material from them. October to early November is our preferred time to go – the weather is more dramatic and there are fewer people around. It’s easier to experience a ‘sense of place’ at this time of year.
We just about caught the last ferry over as the light was failing and made it to the ex miners cottage that we had booked for the week. I’d visited the island before but only for a day in the summer, this was to be quite another experience and our first look at the island this time was at night.
Luing (pronounced Ling) is a small island south of Oban and part of a small group known as the Slate islands, as their history and indeed ‘raison d’etre’ is the mining of slate. Reminders are absolutely everywhere and as a consequence it has its own unique landscape and atmosphere. Fascinating, humbling and visually exciting, Luing has a lot to offer. We were to explore the island thoroughly and also head off to the mainland on occasions to spots we hoped would offer what we were after. We were’t to be disappointed!
No comment yet, add your voice below!