Before The Wildlife … My Magical Mystery Tour of the Isle of Mull

My wildlife photography journey started back in February 2025 when I booked my first ever solo holiday and my first photography holiday where I went to the Cairngorms in Scotland for a full week of wildlife photography.

Now I wasn't too sure what to expect on that trip, but I had the most amazing time, made some new friends and got some incredible photos and experiences out of it. I had such a good time on that Cairngorms trip, I decided that I was going to book there and then, the September 2026 Isle of Mull trip.

My trip started with a 7.5 hour drive up to the boatyard from where we live (the boatyard is located half an hour south of Oban, which is ideal because that is where I am going to be getting my ferry in the morning). To save a bit of money, I decided to camp in the car which, turns out a Volvo V40 is very uncomfortable. I didn't realise until sleeping in it that the back has moulded seats, and so it was a very uncomfortable night. However, it served its purpose and the following morning I got up nice and early and headed to Oban.

My ferry wasn't due 11:25, so I went and got a few supplies as well as breakfast. For anyone travelling to Oban, if you are looking for somewhere for breakfast then the Oban filling station with the Londis, do breakfast in the morning until about 1pm, I chose to have a sausage and hash brown roll, which was delicious.

Once I had refuelled and wasted a bit of time in the car, I decided to head down to the ferry terminal to get checked in and see if I could maybe squeeze on to an earlier ferry.

When I got down there weren't too many cars ahead of me and I got into the overflow lane in the hopes that there would be space. While I was parked up, I noticed in the rearview mirror the next car that pulled up behind was Ali and her husband Gordon. Ali, I had met before on that Cairngorms trip, and she was booked in for both weeks that Carl was running the on Mull. (I was booked onto week one).

After frantically texting her in the car to see if it was actually her, I then got called up to get on to the ferry. For me this was quite a fun experience as I've never actually driven any car on to a ferry before. Thankfully, Ali and Gordon also were able to get on this crossing as well, so I had some sailing buddies for the hour trip to Craignure.

Once parked up and on the ferry, I met up with Ali and Gordon for a catch-up as we sailed across to the Isle of Mull. I also went to explore outside because it was a stunning day, and I didn’t know how long the Scottish weather gods would be kind to us. It was incredibly busy up the top and incredibly windy, so after a little while I ventured back in to catch up more with Ali and Gordon.

The crossing was really smooth and within an hour we were getting off the ferry at Craignure on the Isle of Mull.

I decided to head off on my own because this was the first time I've actually had a car on the Isle of Mull, and I wanted to make the most of it and head to areas where I hadn't been to before. In the past, I have been to the Isle of Mull, but I've only really stayed up around Tobermory when we've been visiting on the boat and without a car. My first port of call was over to the northwest side of the island because I wanted to go and see the Eas Fors waterfall.

Now this waterfall is pretty spectacular, because it goes out to sea and while I was still quite far away at this point you can actually see it from the road as you make your way up to where the waterfall is. Once parked up, I went for a bit of an explore. I was expecting this to be a bit more of a hike than what it was because the waterfall is literally just off the road.

However, the waterfall was absolutely spectacular and after looking at the top part of the waterfall I made my way down across the road to look at the lower parts. Now this waterfall has three drops to it and in the middle there was another stunning drop as it made its way down towards the end of the cliff.

It was an incredibly windy day when I went to visit, I was hoping to get out my DJI Mini 2 to get some photos and videos, however with the winds being as strong as they were I didn’t think that that drone would have been able to fly in those conditions. So, I stuck my Insta360 X5 onto the longest selfie stick I could, and I hung it out over the edge of the cliff to get some photos and videos. (The footage makes me look much closer to the edge that I actually was).

After hanging out at the waterfall for a bit, I went back to the car and continued on my little magical mystery tour. I decided to continue north and head to a place called Calgary Bay which somewhere where I've been wanting to visit for quite a while because it has white sandy beaches.

One thing that became very clear to me quite early on, on this trip, is that the roads on Mull are incredibly tiny. The majority of them are single track roads and you then have passing places. I arrived on a Friday in September so it wasn't exactly peak season, I can see that this would be a place that I would choose to avoid during those peak summer periods because even with the few cars that I did run into on this day trying to get into some of the lay-bys can be a bit awkward.

There were some parts of this road where there had incredibly tight corners going up very steeply, I got lucky and in these areas as there were no cars coming down towards me, but on one of them I did see some tyre marks where someone had gone off the edge of the road which looked to be quite a scary experience.

Watching how the views and the terrain of Mull change as you drive around was absolutely spectacular. Not only do you have beautiful coastal driving, but you've also got these inland moorland like areas which to me looked quite a bit like Middle Earth.

Once parked up I grabbed my coat as, at this point, the weather had taken a bit of a turn, and headed down to the beach for a quick look around before the rain came in.

Again, this is an absolutely (think I need to make use of a thesaurus to expand my vocabulary beyond absolutely, stunning and amazing…) stunning location especially if the sun was out. The one thing that would have made this little trip to Calgary Bay better would have been if Skylar and Tim were up here with me. Skylar absolutely loves the beach, and it would have been just brilliant watching her running up and down the white sands and playing in the water.

As the rain came in, I made a hasty retreat to the car for lunch before continuing on my adventure. By this point it was about half past three, and so I decided that I would start slowly making my way down the island towards where I was going to be staying for the week.

This was a spectacular little drive around the Isle of Mull, and I'm so pleased that I got to spend the whole day by myself just exploring these areas.

Once at a house where we’d be staying for the week, I unloaded all my stuff and met with everyone else who was on the tour. This week was going to be quite quiet with five guest plus Carl and his partner, Charlotte, who were running the trip and providing the wonderful food.  

Now I should probably answer the question, what am I doing here on the Isle of Mull. Well as I said earlier this is a dedicated photography trip, and I'm here to primarily photograph otters. The trip was organised by a Carl Thomas, who I did my Cairngorms trip with. Ali had actually done this little photography retreat a couple of times, and she has got some spectacular images of otters and her image from one of those trips has just won a highly commended award at the British Wildlife Photography Awards 2025 which is an amazing achievement. So, I'm hoping I can get one of those whilst I'm here on Mull …

Not only are we here to see otters, but we are going to hopefully see some white-tailed eagles when we go out on a boat trip with Mull charters later in the week. I'm also hoping that we might get to see some red deer, along with seals and other seabirds.

Like many of you (making a bit of an assumption there), I packed a LOT of gear, for me, it was quite literally ALL of my gear! With the 24-70, 70-200 and the 200-600 mm lenses, along with tripods, filters and bean bags and I can tell you now, that the only things I used for my photos were the 200-600 and the Sony A7iv. We didn’t get too lucky with the weather, so I didn’t go out and do any landscapes, as I was entirely focused on otters.

So that is pretty much my first day on the Isle of Mull. I'm super excited for what the week brings, what I see and get to create whilst I'm here. So please do follow along with the blog posts and the videos (if you are into them), and I will catch you in the next one.

Links:
Check out my post from my trip to the Cairngorms
You can check out Ali’s work (and her winning otter photo) over on Facebook
More info on Carl’s photography retreats can be found over on Facebook