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A Week In Iona – 2008

A Week In Iona: In August 2008 I stayed a week on the remote island of Iona, a small island of the southwest coast of Mull in the with a long and illustrious history.

The island is well-known as ‘The Cradle of Christianity’ in Scotland, where Columba landed with his twelve companions in AD 563 and began to spread their Celtic Christianity through the islands and across Scotland.

St Columba founded an Abbey here, but later it was destroyed by Viking Raids. Benedictine monks came here around 1200 but after the Reformation their Abbey became a disused ruin.

The Abbey was still in ruins when the 8th Duke of Argyll gave it to the church of Scotland in 1899, and some rebuilding took place in the following years. But it was the Iona Community, a Christian group started in the 1930s in working class Glasgow by George MacLeod, who brought together unemployed craftsmen and young ministers which did most of the work, starting in 1938 and only completed around 1965.

The Abbey is now looked after by Historic Scotland, with the Iona Community now tenants who run various events here and in a more modern centre a couple of hundred yards away.

I was fortunate to be able to stay in the Abbey together with a group of friends as guests of the Iona community, and joined in with the daily services and had to take a part in the running of the centre, serving food and setting and clearing tables, as well as chopping vegetables in the kitchen – including more onions than you can imagine. As I commented, “although I enjoyed my stay, Iona to me will always be remembered as a place of tears!”

Iona is a small island – around 1.5 miles long and under a mile wide, with some isolated crofts and open ground with beautiful beaches and bays. Although its small permanent population – now stated as around 170 – is augmented by large numbers of tourists in the summer months, a short walk from the main street still took us away from it all.

This peace and quiet was only interrupted for a couple of hours during our week there, when a large cruise ship came up and anchored off the island, with small boats ferrying hundreds for a short visit. They set foot on the island, took pictures of the Abbey and left – without really experiencing the island at all.

We did something of the same on one day of our visit, taking a boat trip on a powerful fishing boat to the island of Staffa – around 8 miles away – on 13th August. Fortunately the sea was fairly smooth, though the small boat ploughed through the waves with enough motion to make some feel seasick.

On the journey we passed close to the shore of Mull where seals were basking, and a couple of sharks put on a display as we stood to look into the giant caves in the south cliffs from the sea.

The largest of these, as I wrote in 2008, was named by “the great naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks, whose former house in Spring Grove I used to cycle past daily on my way to school who named the largest of these Fingal’s Cave, linking them with the Irish giant who in legend constructed a causeway starting from similar hexagonal basalt columns in Ireland across to Scotland.”

“Previously it had been known in Gaelic as ‘the melodius cave‘ (Uamh Bhin) from the sounds made by the waves lapping in its 150 foot channel, echoed by the roof like a giant natural cathedral. Later as I approached the cave on foot, the melodies I heard were distinctly female, but it was truly disappointing to find they came not from mermaids but the a cappella singing of my fully dressed wife and a few women friends.”

A weekly event we were able to take part in was the weekly pilgrimage around the island organised by the Iona Community which goes from the Abbey and around the island to various key sites, including the marble quarry, the beach on Columba’s Bay where he landed and the Hermit’s Cell, one of the few places on the island where midges were very much more than troublesome.

Visitors are generally not allowed to bring vehicles to the island – and there is very little in the way of roads outside the village where the ferry lands. It was good to get away from traffic and have a week of peace and quiet.

Many more pictures on My London Dairy:
Fingal’s Cave and Staffa
Iona: the Weekly Pilgrimage
the island
the Village (Baile Mór)
the A b bey
the Journey

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Iona – the Abbey

Every time I peel an onion, something I do several times most weeks, it reminds me of our stay at Iona. As paying guests of the Iona Community at the Abbey we took our part in the daily chores which kept the place running, and each morning after breakfast I went with the other ‘Otters’ – the work group to which I had been assigned to the kitchen to prepare vegetables. My part in this job seemed always to be one of two or three of us peeling onions – and you need a lot of onions to cook vegetarian meals for around 50 or 60 people.

There are a lot of dodges that people advise to avoid tears when peeling onions, and I think I tried them all. They may help if you are only peeling one or two, but none help if you have a mountain of them to get through. You cry, and crying only makes it worse. Still, I think I preferred it to cleaning the lavatories and washrooms that my partner was assigned to.

The Abbey is essentially a twentieth-century reconstruction carried out by teams of volunteers from the Iona Community after the site with its ruins was gifted to the Church of Scotland by the 8th Duke of Argyll in 1899, with more modern living accommodation built alongside it in a matching external style.

The Duke is still present – in marble, lying beside his wife.

As well as the abbey, alongside it is a small church, the oldest building on Iona (c 1150) with an ancient graveyard where 48 Kings of Scotland were buried. They were joined more recently by Labour leader John Smith; a boulder marks his grave with the message “An Honest Man’s The Noblest Work of God”.

There are ruins of another chapel in the grounds, as well as those of a former Bishop’s House, and splendid views across the sound to Mull, enough to drag me out of bed for a short walk before breakfast (and onions.) And of course there were a number of short religious services, optional but an important part of the experience, though with too much unaccompanied singing for my taste.

More pictures in and around the Abbey from our visit 12 years ago on My London Diary.

12 Years Ago – our journey to Iona

Twelve years ago today (I’m writing this the day before posting) we – myself, my wife and our elder son – were on our way to Iona. We’d enjoyed 5 nights in Glasgow at a Rennie Mackintosh hotel – more pictures here – and seen the sunset over the Clyde but had got up early to leave the hotel to catch a bus to Oban in the rain which continued to drive against the windows throughout the 3 hour journey.

Near Inverary – this was the clearer view from the bus on our way home

It was still raining as we queued to buy tickets for the two ferry journeys. We were fortunate to reach the bus when the ferry landed at Craignure in time to get a seat, while some unlikely people were left standing in the rain, waiting for 5 hours for our bus to return for a second journey.

We could see Mull from the ferry on our journey home. Outward we only saw rain

*The ferry we had arrived on from Oban at Craignure. seen from the bus windo*

The rain eased off a little for what is quite a spectacular journey across Mull to Fionnphort, around 35 miles on what is rather jokingly called the A849, mostly single track with passing places. It was around an hour and a half before we arrived at the landing slip there for the ferry across the strait to Baile Mòr on the island of Iona.

The jetty at Fionnphort and Mull. The ferry has just started across the strait.

From the slip we could see the island clearly, though there was still a little light rain, and watch the ferry making its way across the 0.85 miles of water, and very clearly see the Abbey where we were to spend a week.

Technically our stay at the Abbey was not a holiday but a retreat and we were there with around thirty friends sharing in the life of the Abbey, including sharing the chores as well as taking part in its religious life including shared meals. But this left plenty of time to enjoy and explore the island, 3 miles long and at its widest point only 1.5 miles wide and virtually car free. I’ll perhaps write more about that later this week.

The Bishop’s House and the Abbey – where we were to stay – from the ferry

A week later we were on our way home, and the weather was much better, and I was able to make a few more photographs, a couple of which I’ve used here.

The ferry approaches the slip at Baile Mòr on Iona

Today, sat at home and still only venturing out for exercise and the very occasional shopping for essentials it’s good to re-live a little from 12 years ago. We’ve had to cancel our holiday this year which would have been in Wales – and hope to make it there in 2021.