With festival season in full swing across the UK and Scotland, including popular music festivals happening up and down the country, here are just a couple of the most anticipated local culture festivals in the Argyll and Bute area offering up something a little different.
Rhinns Lighthouse Festival – shuttle bus, boat trips and volunteers
The Festival Committee writes:
The Rhinns Lighthouse Festival Weekend is now less than two months away and there seems to be a gratifying buzz about the approaching festivities. In light of the expected numbers, the committee is hoping to run a free shuttle bus to the Port Wemyss Street Party on Sunday 10 August. The Street Party, around the Port Wemyss coastal path, will be the culmination of the celebrations to mark the bicentenary of the Rhinns Lighthouse.
Parking in Portnahaven and Port Wemyss during the summer can be tricky at the best of times and the committee hopes a shuttle bus will help alleviate the problem on the day of the Street Party.
The bus will run from Bridgend Auction Mart to Port Wemyss at 11:45am and again at 2pm, picking up at Bruichladdich and Port Charlotte and other points en-route. Return trips will leave Portnahaven/Port Wemyss at 3:45pm and 6:15pm. Although the Sunday shuttle bus is free, anyone who is interested in taking advantage of the offer should book a place through Eventbrite as soon as possible. Just search for Rhinns Lighthouse.
Fergus Speight, Chair of the Festival Committee, said, “Running a bus will mean less congestion in the villages and, at the same time, allow people the chance to enjoy the Street Party without worrying about parking and driving. It also means that people who rely on public transport will also be able to enjoy the event.”
The Street Party will feature music from North of the Bridge, along with a host of food and drinks stalls, including Sidekick’s tea and cakes, burgers from the high school pupils, Islay Oysters, Orsay Seafood, Islay Rum, Islay Ales and The Botanist Bar.
The Festival organisers have also chartered Islay Sea Adventures to provide boat trips across to Orsay over the course of the weekend. The trips will allow people the chance to spend time on the lighthouse island, although sadly there will be no access to the lighthouse itself.
Mairi Trawber, who is curating an exhibition of lighthouse memorabilia said: “For some people it will be a chance to reminisce and relive previous visits, but for many it will be an exciting opportunity to set foot on the ‘Big Island’ for the first time.”
Return tickets, which will cost £15 for adults and £8 for under 16 year olds, will go on sale via Eventbrite in the middle of July.
The organisers are expecting hundreds of people to engage with the festival in the course of the weekend and to help them cope they are looking for volunteers.
Kate Skinner said: “There’s only a handful of us on the Festival Committee so we’re looking to recruit volunteers to help during the weekend. There will be a whole host of tasks to suit all ages and all abilities so if you want to be part of this once in a lifetime celebration, please get in touch by emailing me at portwemysspath@gmail.com or through social media.”
Book Festival tickets go on sale
Carolyn Ferguson writes:
By the time you read this, tickets for the Islay Book Festival 2025 should be on sale! We have now published full programme details, for what promises to be an action-packed long weekend, with events spread all across our beautiful island. This year’s Festival runs from Thursday 28 August to Sunday 31 August, and there’s genuinely something for everyone.
The Book Festival is staged, above all, for the vibrant community of Islay and Jura; and this year we’ve worked especially hard to make it as attractive as possible, to our local audience. In a time when we sadly see some book festivals around the UK having to close down, we’re proud and passionate about continuing to keep ours healthy, vital and relevant to the community and island lives.
So, we’d love you to try at least one session, especially if you’ve never given it a go before. And for our loyal regular audience, we look forward to bringing you another varied and inspiring line-up this year.
We’ve attracted 16 authors, who are travelling from all over the UK and who are responsible for some of 2025’s most eye-catching releases – writers like Rory Cellan-Jones, Hamza Yassin, Jen Stout, Peter Mackay and Len Pennie. And as always, we’re providing a lively schools programme of six authors, which we’re bringing to our schools completely free – one of the most important things we do, as a festival.
But we’re also delighted to be able to present you with some new ways to attend terrific festival events, as affordably as possible.
As always, under-18s, students and carers can enter all of our traditional-style author events free of charge. And for everyone else buying tickets for these events, this year we are introducing ‘Pay What You Can’ pricing for most of these sessions. This means you can select how much you pay at point of booking. By purchasing at our recommended ticket price of £7, you help us continue offering reduced ticket prices to those who need it, as well as supporting the Book Festival.
But you can also choose to pay just £3 or £5, or indeed £10 if you want to offer that extra support. As a small charity, we rely on ticket sales and donations to bring this wonderful event to our island, but we want the festival to be accessible to absolutely everyone and we don’t want the cost of events to be any kind of barrier to seeing brilliant authors speak, in our iconic Islay venues.
We’re also offering a totally free family session, ‘Fun in the Woods’ with Ranger Hamza, on the Saturday – suitable for the whole family and free of charge, although advance registration is essential.
And rounding out the programme, we have on sale a range of ‘experience’ style events, which proved hugely popular last year. They carry strictly limited ticket-numbers ranging from: screen-printing and a social bike-ride, to a chef-talk with local delicacies and a crime fiction session with whisky at Bruichladdich Distillery.
Get in quick to secure your place. All of our tickets are on sale via our Islay Book Festival website. We hope you find some sessions to tempt you and that you find a reason to give the Islay Book Festival a try this time around.
