Ashram Community

Iona

We were staying in the Abbey on Iona, a small island in the inner Hebrides, just off the west coast of Mull. The abbey, in ruins at the end of the nineteenth century, was rebuilt by the Iona Community starting in the 1930s. It is now owned by Historic Scotland, and the Iona Community are tenants. They also have another conference centre building across the road, and some of the volunteers and staff who run the centre live in other houses on the island.

Iona is a small island, only around 3 miles from north to south and a mile wide. It has around 80 permanent residents but in Summer there are several hundreds of visitors staying there as well as many day trippers.

There are more of my pictures from Iona on My London Diary.

You get to Mull by a ferry from Oban, itself about 3 hours journey by bus or train from Glasgow. The ferry lands you at Craignure, and there are two buses a day from their to Fionnphort. We were some of the first off the ferry at Craignure and this rainy view of the ferry was from the bus. More people came on the ferry than the bus could take, and the bus operator said "I'm not running a bus for nine people" so they had to wait around five hours for the later bus.

There are more pictures of Iona on my personal web site. Here I've mainly included those that show people from the Ashram community. If any members would like larger pictures to print, e-mail me (petermarshall at cix.co.uk)