Greenbelt , Islands

Iona

We've been on the island of Iona this week with friends from Greenbelt.

For the past ten years Emma and I have made the pilgrimage here every two years or so. We'd each visited the island before we met each other too; it was on a call from the village phone box that I discovered my degree result twenty years ago. (I thought I might have scraped a third; I couldn't have been more wrong!)

It's an island we know well, but this year I discovered dozens of places I'd never visited before. Rather than stick to the well worn paths I ventured across the moorland at the heart of the island, climbed hills I'd not previously noticed and more than once sunk deep into a bog I wish I had spotted.

As we headed north on Friday I wondered whether this would be our last visit to Iona for a while. I now know that it will not. We shall return.