To the Gulf of Corryvreckan: Part IV: The Holy Grail

Today's challenge was to cycle up to the very far north of the isle by 4 pm when the whirlpool was at it's height. After a slow start (something to do with the music stopping at 5 am; but where else could you hear the sounds of people calmly getting into their cars and driving off after an all-night party?), the show was on the road. For its size, Jura is the least inhabited, wildest and least visited of the isles, and it showed, the further north we moved. After 20 miles the tarmac peters out, but with 5 miles still to go till Jura runs out, there was nothing for it but a bone-shattering, maddening wobble on a rocky track. This is me on a good bit, and as you can see, the on-board luggage only added to the general liveliness and instability.
And so, driven to exhaustion and characters thoroughly built, we staggered past George Orwell's house (I could see why he ended up writing "1984" there). Ditching the bikes, we continued on foot to the Gulf. At that point, it started to rain, and visibility came down. We staggered on, determined after all this that we would see the "effing whirlpool", as it had become known for the last 15 miles. By the time we got there the whirlpool was in relatively quiescent mode, but it still seemed to capture the imagination nonetheless. The vast region of white circular traces were just visible through the mist, and so it was worth the trek. Somehow, though, the trip wasn't all about the destination. It was what we saw along the way.
In a masterstroke of organisation, Stu had found a nice man with a boat called Hamish (the man, not the boat), who could take us back to the mainland. The juxtaposition of landscapes couldn't have been more marked: from the island that time forgot to the manicured predictability of the Crinan canalside cycle track.