A Very Lucky Wildlife Walk on the Isle of Ulva
Continuing on our Sottish sailing adventure, we found ourselves moored up on the pontoon at Ulva Ferry, on the west coast of the Isle of Mull, due to some rather strong winds. If you have gone on a Mull Charters or Turus Mara tour, then these all start from the same pontoon we are staying on. Rather than doing one of said tours (they were all fully booked), I set out to explore the beautiful, but a bit forgotten Isle of Ulva.
To get to Ulva, you need to pop a little passenger ferry, which costs £8 for a return, and runs from 9:00 am – 5:30 pm, or if like me you have access to your own dingy and have a driver (thank you Tim), you can get dropped off on the slip way and start your exploration.
I picked up a map from the Ferryman the day before when we visited the fabulous Boathouse Café (if you like sea food, then add this into your visit as the options were amazing) and headed out on my planned route.
Things started out great with being able to tick one animal off my tick list straight away, the Hooded Crow. We don’t have these in Wales, and I have been after a decent image of one for a few years, but hadn’t managed it, until now!
My planned route was made up with a few of the options available on Ulva, I headed out towards the church on the farm loop. Ulva is a hot spot for walkers and cyclists and you can even stay on the island in a yurt or at the hostel, and on this first stretch, I did see quite a few people, which did bring up the ol’ filming myself in front of strangers anxiety levels a bit, but, thankfully the further I walked the less people I saw.
I made it to the church, which, unfortunately, was closed due to a damaged roof, so we didn’t get to go in there, and headed straight out on the Minster’s Walk, that took me though some beautiful woodland, with wild garlic in full bloom, before walking through fields of bluebells.
After hopping the deer fence and then realising I could have just opened the gate, there was a sign for a standing stone. Not one to miss an opportunity to see this, I took a slight detour which led me to a small herd of highland cows chilling under some birch trees. As these were the first animals that I had had the opportunity to photograph, since my hooded crow, back at the start of the walk, I stopped and took a couple images (they were not the best, but it was something) and then headed onto the stone.
The standing stone is in a bit of a dip in a clearing surrounded by sloping hills and young birch trees, I wanted something a bit different (though I had done 0 research into this so I had nothing to gauge what ‘different’ would be from any other photo) so started out trying to find a composition with my 200-600 mm lens as this would really compress the scene. This proved to be a bit more difficult that I thought, as the sloping hills kept intersecting with the stone, and I didn’t want to cut anything off.
I then approached the stone, and being a fan of the Outlander book series, did a quick test to see if I could be a time traveler, and pass through the stone. However, I wasn’t that prepared as I had no precious stones on me and it wasn’t one of the fancy dates like Beltane, so alas, no time travel for me, but that’s probably for the best as I am quite happy in my own timeline…
Getting back on track with the photos, I ‘walked the scene’ to see what angles I liked before getting my Sony A7iv out which was armed with the 24-70 f2.8 GM ii lens. I tried a few different compositions, making sure I didn’t break the skyline with the stone (one of the things I have managed to retain from watching all the landscape photography videos I like on the YouTubes). I got a couple that I liked, before trying again with the 200-600 at 200mm – there is only so far one can back up before not being able to see through the trees. I actually quite liked this one, as the scene was compressed and the stone quite prominent in the image.
Once my images were taken, I chose to have a spot of lunch, on my new Eardley Creations waterproof mat – thanks Si for that, and the headed out on my walk once more.
After rounding a corner, I entered what I have since dubbed ‘Stonechat Alley’. As you can tell from the name, this little stretch of path had lots of lovely stonechats to attempt to photograph. There was one male nearby, so I focused on him first, he gave me some lovely poses on the shrubbery, and I am really happy with the images I was able to create of him. He did have either a tick or some sort of growth on one side of his face, so I used the clone tool in lightroom to remove this from my final images.
While it was a lot harder to spot her, I did eventually manage to spot the female and get some cracking shots of her also, these are some of my favourites of the whole walk.
I then headed out a bit further than my turn off for the Livingstone Trail, as the map said that the south side of the island had some of the best views, and not knowing if/when I would be back I wanted to have a look. This side of the island was hellish windy, but it was lovely to see, the day was quite hazy so my view was a bit stifled by that, but I was glad I made the effort to go down here.
On the way back up the trail, I managed to spot some deer! They were very, very far away, but lovely to see some as we don’t get many where I am due to all the sheep.
Back on the Livingston Trail, I dropped down into a magical woodland, where at the bottom I got very lucky and had a split second encounter with some more deer! I managed to get some images of the one that was out on the edge of the trees before the little group moved on. As a deer lover, this was a very memorable encounter for me, and while there is an annoying branch (there always is) I am very happy with my image.
My trail then headed through some more lovely looking cows in the ferns, before passing a very photogenic tree which I just had to stop and attempt to get some decent images of. I had the weather and time of day against me a bit here, it was about 3pm at this point and the clouds were breaking up, but I did my best and I am quite happy with the results.
It was then onto Livingstone’s Cave, it would have been great if there was an information board here as to what this cave was used for in the past, but the views from the entrance of the cave were breath taking. The cave itself wasn’t much to look at, with a shed inside, a bit of a dug out pit and lots of bird poop.
I headed back down to the main trail, and continued around the island. You get quite close to the coast at this point, and there is a spectacular cliff edge where you can see some basalt columns. Naturally, I stopped here and again, tried to take some landscape images. This was made a bit more difficult due to the strong winds wanting to whisk my hat off, and again with the weather and time of day not being ideal for this, however I do quite like them.
The walk then heads back in land a bit, so I was out of the wind. The trail starts heading upwards again and along a section of this I spotted a male slow worm on the track. It was it a bit of a difficult spot to get images of, as there was a bit rock step behind it and the trail was heading uphill, but with the 24-70 lens I got some nice images.
The trail then opened up into some fields again, with another batch of highland cows to photograph. There was one cow in particular that caught my attention, out of the edge of the group with the loch and mountains as a back drop.
After negotiating my way around this herd (there was one cow that took a dislike to me, so a wider berth was given to get around in one piece), was now back on the farm route heading back towards the ferry. There wasn’t that much to photograph here in the way of wildlife, though the scenery was spectacular. On almost the home straight, there was a gaggle (love that term) of greylag geese, amongst the long grasses and I got some really lovely images of them.
Overall I think my route was about 10.5km or 6.5 miles and I loved every minute of it. If you are ever in the area and find yourself at a loose end, Ulva really is a lovely spot to visit – even if you don’t make it past the café!
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