The Prettiest Little Town in Scotland

Scotland practically invented “dour” as an architectural aesthetic. Glasgow and Edinburgh embelish their austere granite buildings with a coat of soot. And Scottish castles, after all, are meant to be forbidding. I’ve noticed that even most cars in Scotland are gray.

But Tobermory is different. Did the villagers not get the “Gray is Good” memo? Or did they purposefully chose to flagrantly, flamboyantly, flaunt their colors? This tiny fishing village in the Hebridean Island of Mull is the prettiest place Teresa (my beloved spouse) and I know in Scotland. Shops and restaurants spread out along the waterfront and round the bend of the harbor like a multicolored candy cane. The buildings are painted in bright pinks, yellows, blues, and here and there in hues of green and red — colors all too rare in this windswept and rainy land.

This was our fourth visit to Tobermory, the only actual town on Mull. But our first since 2019. So far in our 2024 Highland fling we had seen how some communities had recovered from the pandemic — which drastically curtailed tourism — while others malingered in decline. So we felt some trepidation on the journey back to Mull and the little town we love. What a relief to…