Oban (tourist web site) is a seaside resort town on the firth of Lorn on the west coast of Scotland, 122 miles east of  Edinburgh and 97 miles northwest of Glasgow. The nearest island one sees from Oban is tine  Kerrera and beyond that is the Isle of Mull.  Off the southwest tip of Mull is the Isle of Iona, which is important for the history of Christianity.  Saint Columba founded a monestary there in the 6th century, a base from which Christianity spread through Scotland. Some early Scottish kings are buried there.  The town of Tobermory, which we visited by boat from Oban, is on the northern tip of Mull.

 

We had visited Oban in the 1980's but left soon after we arrived because of the weather.  It was rainy and very foggy, so foggy that we could not see anything off shore.  On our 2003 trip, it rained most of the time, but at least you could see the harbor, and even the islands, including the Isle of Mull.

 

Oban is a charming town with a horseshoe shaped harbor and a very pretty waterfront.  It has one of the oldest distillaries in Scotland.  It also has two ruins, Dunollie Castle, and Dunstaffnage Castle and McCaig's Tower, a "folly" -- a building  built simply as a decoration and to remind people of the wealthy banker who built it.

 

As a resort town you would expect things to be expensive, and you would be right.  An order of fish and chips, take away,  would set you back about 8 British pounds in 2003.  In the spring of 2008, that would come to nearly 16 U.S. dollars--if the price had not gone up between 2003 and 2008.  We passed on the fish and chips and had lunch in a Chinese restaurant--proportionally as expensive, and not very good.

 

One of the nice things to do in Oban is take ferries to the offshore islands.  We wanted to see the town of Tobermory on the Isle of Mull.  That is the next town we describe on this web site.