We took a last look at our Hotel in Dunblane and headed out early to catch our plane to the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. Glasgow is Scotland's largest city and it is a working city. We gave ourselves lots of time to get to the airport. However, no traffic jams and no detours and no accidents, even though the airport was on the far side of the city we zipped right up to it. Between excellent Scottish signage and American Apple CarPlay, it was a comfortable drive. The car return and airport services were run as about as well as could be imagined. I believe the Scots match the Swiss in efficiency, and they are a lot more friendly. As a reminder to myself, from now on I will rely on Apple Maps and CarPlay while traveling abroad. As always, I brought my Satellite GPS system, thinking I could save on cell phone charges and, of course, have better coverage. It is my opinion that the information and accuracy of CarPlay more than makes up for the few times that we lacked cell phone coverage.
It is true, sometimes getting there IS half of the fun. We flew LoganAir from Glasgow to the Isle of Barra. The plane had only ten passengers including the pilot, a female, and the co-pilot, who also acted as steward, gate agent and ground crew. The plane was a two propeller job with non retractable wheels. The wheels were over sized and wide. They looked disproportionate to the plane. The purpose of these being balloon tires was that this flight lands on a beach. The Isle of Barra Airport is the only beach in the world with scheduled commercial flights. Usually 3 per day, depending on the tide. During the winter there are fewer flights because they make no nighttime landings and the days this far north get very short. Sometimes the tide being out just doesn't coordinate with the daytime sun.
Also weather plays a big part. Sitting in the Glasgow airport, the co-pilot (now acting as the gate attendant) said the weather on Barra was pretty bad and we would have to delay taking off. About 45 minutes later he came in again and said the weather was still bad but "we might give it a shot". Sandy was looking for a little more assurance than "we might give it a shot". Still she got onto the plane and headed into Barra's Blizzard. All went well, though there was cloud cover all the way so we did not see much of the islands from the air. Surprisingly, this plane with the big tires does not land on completely dry sand. As we hit the beach huge flumes of water spray shot up. To reinforce our understanding of how bad the weather has been in Barra we ran into a couple who had been delayed for two days trying to get off the island.
In the fog, rain, and cold wind we drove the complete loop around Barra
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