{"id":21124,"date":"2018-03-12T09:46:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T18:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/?p=21124"},"modified":"2018-03-12T15:09:31","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T00:09:31","slug":"sunset-over-the-shores-of-bowmore-on-the-isle-of-islay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/sunset-over-the-shores-of-bowmore-on-the-isle-of-islay\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunset over the Shores of Bowmore on the Isle of Islay"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The highlight of my most recent Scotland trip was a week spent on the Isle of Islay. Pronounced “Eye-la,” with the syllabic emphasis on “eye,” Islay is part of the Southern, Hebrides, a chain of islands off\u00a0the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The southern tip of Islay sits just\u00a025 miles north of Ballycastle, Ireland.<\/p>\n

Islay is famous\u00a0for it’s fine Scotch whisky, specifically, the smoky peaty stuff. There are eight distilleries on Islay, most of which are known for producing the most heavily peated whisky known to man. It’s the home of whiskies such as Laphroaig, Lagavulin, Ardbeg, and Bowmore. If you’ve every had a sip of scotch that takes like a campfire, chances are it was made on Islay.<\/p>\n

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After my super fun hike up Beinn Sgulaird<\/a>\u00a0near the town of Oban,\u00a0we caught the Sunday afternoon ferry to Islay, landing in Port Askaig, and made our way to the small\u00a0town\u00a0of Bowmore.<\/p>\n

Situated on the western shores of Loch Indaal, Bowmore, (pronounced with the emphasis on “more”, from the Gaelic Bogh Mor, meaning “big rock,” or “big sea rock”) is home to the one of the oldest single malt distilleries in all of Scotland.<\/p>\n

Established in 1779, it’s still one of the only distilleries that spreads malted barley on the floor in their malt barn, turning it by hand every few hours before kiln-drying it right there on site. Most distilleries buy and ship in barley that’s already been malted and dried to their specifications. To meet demand, even those distilleries who do floor maltings still\u00a0ship in some of their malted barley, as they simply don’t have enough floor space.\"\"<\/p>\n

I seem to have a fascination for gold-colored, traditionally produced, old world liquids. Exactly fifteen years previous, I did a solo cycling tour in southern Spain that was driven by my love of good olive oil. As I pedaled around Andaluc\u00eda, I discovered Spanish Sherry. Given that many of the Scottish distilleries mature much\u00a0of their whisky in old sherry casks, I felt like this trip was a serendipitous throwback to that memorable\u00a0cycling adventure.<\/p>\n

In fact, I had a sip of one particular whisky\u00a0during my Islay trip\u00a0that was matured in Manzanilla sherry barrels<\/a>, and when I brought the glass up and took the first sniff, I was instantly transported to the sunny seaside town of C\u00e1diz, Spain, where I remember sipping glasses of cool, dry fino sherry in tapas bars back in February of 2003. That was a very special year for me. Here’s one of my old C\u00e1diz photos from way back when.<\/p>\n

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Flashback to the town of C\u00e1diz, Spain. Shot on Velvia film back in Feb, 2003.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Anyway, back to Islay. We arrived in Bowmore with enough time to check into our quaint little hotel, the\u00a0delightful Harbour Inn<\/a>\u00a0and then head outside to catch a few sunset photos along the shores of town. The Harbour Inn\u00a0is actually owned by the Bowmore distillery.<\/p>\n

They also have some wonderful cottages, which I was really hoping to get, but unfortunately, those were all booked, as I’m sure they often are, months in advance.<\/p>\n

Whereas I usually just wing it when I travel, and find places to stay or camp right there at the end of each day, this was a short trip, so I made reservations before heading to Islay. Plus, it was my 50th birthday trip, so I treated myself to enjoy this one\u00a0in style.<\/p>\n

We had a few cloud afternoons during our week on Islay, but as luck would have it, we were fortunate\u00a0to have a rich, colorful sunset on our fist evening in Bowmore. All of these\u00a0were made with my Fujifilm X-T2<\/a> and XF50-140mm f\/2.8 zoom lens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t often\u00a0take the\u00a050-140 with me when I travel, and I never take it on bike trips, so it was a nice addition to have this lens\u00a0along with me. After all, it’s a fast workhorse zoom with incredibly sharp glass and great image stabilization capabilities.\u00a0The last photo in black and white shows that off, I shot that one handheld at 1\/13 sec.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The highlight of my most recent Scotland trip was a week spent on the Isle of Islay. Pronounced “Eye-la,” with the syllabic emphasis on “eye,” Islay is part of the Southern, Hebrides, a chain of islands off\u00a0the west coast of the Scottish mainland. The southern tip of Islay sits just\u00a025 miles north of Ballycastle, Ireland. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[637,89,149,574,92],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21124"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21146,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21124\/revisions\/21146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danbaileyphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}