As the ferry lifts anchor at Kennacraig, its belly full of cars, motorbikes and bicycles, I go to the windswept top deck and open my bible. It's only fitting to dip into it as the low-lying Argyll hillsides slide by and we head along West Loch Tarbert and into the Sound of Jura off Scotland's rugged west coast.
Not the Bible, you understand, but Whisky, a pocket-sized paean to that most princely and Scottish of drinks. First published in 1930 and written by Aeneas MacDonald, it's the perfect companion for a pilgrimage such as this.
For while the Isle of Islay, our destination, is a relatively tiny 40 kilometre by 25 kilometre dot in the ocean, it holds within its bosom the holiest of single malt holies, the Laphroaig distillery.
The biblical language isn't used lightly. In his opening pages, MacDonald makes the prescient point that 'those who make the food and drink of man' bear an 'almost priestly responsibility, which they cannot barter away for turnovers and dividends without betraying their trust as custodians of civilisation'.
It helps that Islay is also home to seven more single malt whisky distilleries. And four of those - Bruichladdich, Ardbeg, Lagavulin and Laphroaig - are among the most sublime substances a man can pour down his throat.
So driving off the ferry 2 1/2 hours later at Port Ellen is like driving on to the Promised Land. Since I organised my trip too late, the only place I can find to stay is Burnside Lodge, in the tiny fishing village of Port Wemyss on the other side of the island - not too far as the crow flies but about an hour's drive around the shores of Loch Indaal.
Islay has a population of 3,500 people scattered throughout a landscape of coastal grassland, dunes, heathland, woods, moors and peat bogs - and about 300 million sheep.
