It was rainy and blustery this morning, and neither of us particularly wanted to jump out of bed and rush off to be tourists. Instead, we just enjoyed our room, which was, from the name on the door, once the bedroom of the Duke of Argyle himself. The hotel served a wonderful breakfast, though, as John pointed out, it was impossible to top the Hotel du Vin for a morning meal.
By afternoon, the sun had come out and we were ready to walk into town and see what we could in Oban. We stopped into various shops, and in Oban’s equivalent of Big Lots John found a rather nice warm jacket for only about 20 pounds. We then caught a taxi to DunOllie Castle, Oban’s biggest local tourist attraction.
We had a very funny young man as our guide. He began by telling us, “People ask me all the time questions about how this place is funded and things like that. I have no idea. Don’t even ask. When I’m not doing tours I’m making sandwiches.” But he did prove to be remarkably well informed about the history of the site. DunOllie - it is pronounced exactly the same as the mountain in Alaska - was the ancestral home of the Clan MacDougal. For many centuries, the MacDougals were one of the most powerful families in Argyle, and the area around Oban was the center of that power. They had a number of castles up and down the coast, but DunOllie was the largest and most important.
Not that much is left of the castle now except parts of the central tower.
Scottish castles were built in a similar manner to those in Ireland and both featured a multi-story square central tower. This would serve as a storehouse, armory, and residence for the clan laird and his family. On the roof there would be a platform and a small guardhouse. Today the upper floors of the castle are gone, and some of the bottom floors had are now underground as well. The major remnant visible is the old kitchen.
As Scotland became a more settled kingdom with central authority in Edinburgh, there was little need for clans to have traditional castles, and the chiefs of MacDougal clan in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries built a more traditional house. Unfortunately, the so-called “frugal MacDougals” saved money by tearing down much of the old castle and recycling the stone into this new building.
While part of this house has been turned into a museum, the house is still used as a MacDougal residence today and they maintain a small farm as well.
We had a late afternoon meal at the snack shop there, and we were just about the last people to leave DunOllie in the afternoon. We walked back along the beach road towards Oban. It was a gloriously lovely evening.
Tomorrow we start on out boat trip of Mull and the Inner Hebrides.
