Oban and Bjorn's Revolution against Public Transport.

Well, the proletariat's discontent against the public transport bourgeoisie finally reached boiling point today. Just down the road from the youth hostel is a bus stop. The timetable there clearly stated that a bus was supposed to be heading to Oban, my destination today, at quarter past nine this morning. At twenty to ten and after nearly forty minutes of waiting I decided it probably wasn't coming. Another bus showed up and the bus driver stopped to have lunch. I asked him how I would best go about getting to my destination. He didn't seem hopeful, but eventually his advice led me to a twenty minute walk into Balloch, another twenty minutes wait for a bus at the "bus station" (a carpark with a poxy bus shelter), a fifteen minute trip to Dumbarton, and another half an hour walk. It is here that I arrived at a place that hires out cars.
Let me tell you, the people have risen in revolt, and things will never be the same.
I always shied away from hiring a car, thinking it would be too expensive. But the price I eventually paid for it was well worth avoiding the heartache I've been experiencing, and I doubt it was significantly more than tickets on buses and trains.

My beast, and weapon of the people.

I picked up an embarassing little Ford Ka. The seat's uncomfortable and it struggles up hills, but it beats the bus any day. Of course there will be some amount of annoyance when I return it, because I have to bring it back to the exact place I got it (it's only a small chain) and then get a train to Edinburgh, but Edinburgh isn't that far away from Dumbarton anyway.
So today I took my little car and drove it to Oban, taking the scenic route (which the bus, had it ever showed up, would certainly have avoided)

McCaig's tower

A description of Oban (emphasis on the O. I keep getting that wrong!) in a travel guide would probably contain the word "nestled". It's sitting amongst some pretty hills on Loch Lorne with a good view of the Isle of Mull and a few other islands. Perched above the town in the hills, like a vampire's fortress, is McCaig's tower. It's actually not much of a tower, and it was built in the 1890s and early 1900s. It's really just a ring wall surrounding a garden, built by John Stuart McCaig, an entrepeneur, to give all the unemployed masons in the town work as a memorial to his family. It naturally has the best views in the city.
Heading back down to the town from the tower I descended the so-called "Jacob's Ladder" - a relatively steep, winding set of steps heading down the hill. Despite what it's name suggest, I was barely electrocuted at all. I imagine that you'll get the shock going up. (No don't laugh. I shouldn't be encouraged!)