In July we traveled to England to visit family, and also extended our trip into Scotland.

We began our trip with a lovely walk on the edge of the North York Moors National Park.

Next we gathered at the Harrisson home to celebrate my brother-in-law’s engagement. There was a tremendous spread of food, and a party that centered around watching England win their match in the Euro football tournament.

After the celebrations, we took a train to Edinburgh and narrowly missed seeing the King on his visit.

We had a mix of weather in Edinburgh, and covered a good bit of the city on foot.

To get to the Isle of Barra we took a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow, then on to Oban. After a night in a youth hostel, we took an early morning ferry to Barra.

We explored the dunes on the west coast of the island.

The wind picked up and we were caught in a small squall on Tangasdale beach.

By evening time the weather had passed and we felt like we were in paradise.

Our cabin had a window which beautifully framed the view across the bay.

On our second day the weather changed again and we spent most of the day reading and drinking tea.

On the third day we hired bicycles and explored around the entire island.

At the northern end of the island we saw a most unique beach airport.

We explored the local beaches and photographed lichens.

In the afternoon we got caught in short rain showers, but were also visited by a seal among the fishing boats (seal not pictured).

On our fourth day we headed down to the harbour under cloudy skies to catch a boat tour to Mingulay.

The skies soon cleared and we enjoyed a lovely day on the remote isle to the south of Barra.

Some of the plants were very similar to the ones we had spotted off the remote NW coast of Canada -on the islands of Haida Gwaii.

The main purpose of our excursion to Mingulay was to spot puffins – and they did not disappoint!

Back in Castlebay (the main town on Barra) we witnessed the annual “Fisherman’s Mass” celebrations.

Boats were decorated and paraded around under the watchful eyes of the RNLI.

Our time on Barra was drawing to an end.

We hiked up the local high point – Heaval (383m above sea level) – on our last evening.

The next morning we reversed our journey, but instead of going back to Edinburgh, we stayed the night in Glasgow.

I was quite intrigued by Glasgow – it felt much less manicured than Edinburgh.

The evening weather was not what I expected from Scotland, very different from my last visit in 2016.

We had a nice time wandering the city and taking pictures before starting our trip back home.