Islay - Planning

Each year our little gang gets permission from our wives for a few days away. This year, delayed by two due to Covid, we managed to get to Islay!

Our great logo designed by John @JWBassman_

As with any kind of road trip planning is very important...

This blog explains our planning process and how it all turned out - future blogs will discuss our individual distillery visits.

Dates:

This was probably the easiest thing to sort out - we have a regular start date of the last Monday in September. For this trip we would be travelling to Islay on the Monday, have two full days on the island and then travelling back on the Thursday.

Transport:

A six hour drive was required to get us to the Kennacraig Ferry Terminal, John was our driver. Mark was making his own arrangements from Germany!

We booked the two Ferries in February, again these can get booked up early and can get very busy in the summer.

Once on the ferry we experienced the best and worst of Scottish autumnal weather!

Photo: John @JWBassman_

Photo: John @JWBassman_

On the way home we left from Port Ellen giving a great view of the maltings and distillery.

Once on the island we need transport between our accommodation and the distilleries, there is a bus service on the main roads but not to each distillery, Bunnahabhain for example is 4 miles from the main road. Ringing up for an taxi at short notice is going to end in disappointment - there just aren't enough on the island to meet demand - Uber haven't got to Islay yet!

We booked a taxi from Attic Taxis for each of our journeys about 3 months in advance once we'd sorted out our distillery visits timetable.

Me, John, Colin our taxi driver, Andy, Max & Mark at Port Ellen

Accommodation:

This can be hard to find, especially during the summer, that's part of the reason we go at the end of September, things have started to quietened down a bit - but it was still very busy.

As we wanted to visit distilleries all over the island we decided on the town of Bowmore to be our base - it's central with a maximum of 30 minutes to get to any distillery.

We booked an AirBnB cottage last September, so 12 months before we were due to go. There were 5 of us going so we needed somewhere with 5 individual beds - no one likes sharing!

Food:

Self catering for breakfast is easy - especially when you need a cooked breakfast to put a lining on your stomach! Lunch options are limited especially when you have a short time between visits.

We managed to sneak in a quick bite in the Ardnahoe Café on the Tuesday but made sandwiches for the Wednesday.

We booked Lucci’s Restaurant at the Bowmore Hotel for our evening meal on the Monday about a week in advance, and again for the Wednesday. On the Tuesday we tried to book the Pizzeria for the Wednesday but they were already fully booked. We ended up getting a nice Chinese Takeaway!

Visits:

There are 9 open distilleries on Islay, you just can't visit them all in 2 days! These were the options:

We agreed that we'd concentrate on Warehouse Tastings over Distillery Tours and finally managed to get a timetable which looked like this:

Tuesday morning: Bunnahabhain Warehouse 9 Tasting

Tuesday afternoon: Bowmore No. 1 Vaults Secrets Warehouse Tasting

Wednesday morning: Laphroaig Distiller's Wares (Tour & Warehouse 1 Tasting)

Wednesday afternoon: Bruichladdich Distillery Tour & Warehouse Tasting 

Other distilleries we visited here, branded Glencairns here!

So our final timetable looked like this: 

A huge thanks to John, Andy, Max and Mark, to Colin for getting us around and all of the distillery guides and workers who made the trip one we'll never forget - I don't think they will either!