Find out more about the 2025 celebration in Scotland
BY MAZ GORDON, FOUNDER OF OBAN LESBIAN WEEKEND, PHOTOS BY GILL WILLIAMSON (www.shesnaps.co) AND KATIE BYRAM (www.katiebyram.com)
When I first moved back to Oban almost six years ago, I was excited to hear that Oban had its own pride. On attending it, I was shocked and a little disappointed when I couldn’t find a single lesbian at Oban’s Pride event. Straight participation is great but where were all the lesbians? I’d always worked in LGBTQIA media and events and naively assumed that I’d find some small groups for LGBTQIA women around Oban, but I didn’t.
Oban has always been a popular tourist destination, with many guest houses selling out months ahead or tripling their prices as tourists flock from all over the world to enjoy our world-class scenery and boat trips to the islands in the summer months. Many queer women I knew would say they’d love to visit but the reality was that most queer women went to places like Brighton or London when looking for a gay friendly holiday, so I decided to bring some queer women to Oban & Oban Lesbian+ Weekend was born.
Over the last four years of our festival, I’ve realised that there are hundreds, if not thousands of LGBTQIA women who also live in areas of the country where they don’t have a queer community. It’s been beautiful to see friendships and relationships forming, sometimes with women who live in other parts of the country or abroad, and sometimes women come to Oban Lesbian+ Weekend and meet women who live less than 10 miles away, but they’d never met before.
SOLO TRAVELLERS WELCOME!
The thing is, lesbians are a nervous bunch. At times it feels like every one of the 300 guests who attend has messaged to say how nervous they are about attending solo. I may not come across as the quiet and shy type but I know myself that it can seem scary to approach a group of women in a bar. So we have a variety of ways for women to meet.
Lots of women come to our mini events and make friends before the event. We book our host accommodation with a variety of options to suit most budgets. Women love it that they can have their own room but make new friends over breakfast or they can come on a budget, staying in our exclusively queer women’s, seafront YHA dorms & get ready for nights out with their new roommates. On the first night we will have our main host, Chewin’ the Fat’s Karen Dunbar, charming us with her comedy hosting and running some ice breakers to make it easy to mingle. Some people prefer to meet over a smaller, hosted dinner and some will meet during a workshop or a scenic hike.
MEET A GF THE OLD FASHIONED WAY – F2F!
We get lots of couples coming to OLW, keen to make friends and enjoy our boat trips. We also get countless couples who form over the weekend. Lots of us are bored of swiping on Tinder and meeting F2F makes it so much easier to find a weekend girlfriend or maybe a life partner. There is one lady from Oban who publicly came out not long after we started OLW, she’s now got a girlfriend down in London. Another couple met at the first festival and are now planning their wedding. I hope I get an invite!
Singles all come looking for love, whether they admit it or not and I love seeing all the OLW relationships grow. We also get a lot of couples who come. Couples want to meet new friends too, so we have the option of traffic light stickers at the opening party, which women like. It’s nice to know if you’re getting chatted to or chatted up! We also have poly and ENM workshops. Poly lifestyles are growing, they are not for everyone but we get some really interesting discussions about different types of non-monogamy, what works & what doesn’t.
KAREN DUNBAR TO HEADLINE!
We’ve got an amazing line up this year. Karen Dunbar, who was made famous on the comedy TV show Chewin’ the Fat is our main host and DJ. We’ve got Nicole Faraday, who played Snowball Merriman and Shell Dockley in the ITV prison drama Bad Girls, and is going to be singing and running a Bad Girls workshop. We’ve also got a disability campaigner and burlesque performer from Perth, Australia, Vogue Passion, flying over to perform and Kerrin Dow, who sounds a little like an Australian Melissa Etheridge is flying back over to perform for the second time.
However, we feel that you can get talented, queer performers at many LGBTQIA festivals, what you can’t get is the women flock to Oban for our amazing scenery and boat trips while in LGBTQIA women’s company. We offer women a choice of two boat trips. On our wildlife trip, women go on an ex-fishing boat on a beautiful tour past a few castles to check out the local wildlife. They normally see seals & seal pups and sometimes a minke whale or eagle pops up.
WHERE ELSE CAN YOU SEE LESBIANS, DOLPHINS & SEALS TOGETHER?
We also offer women our scenic cruise to the island of Mull. We will have the lovely Emma Foreman from Peterhead, providing entertainment on the ferry. We cruise past castles and lighthouses, then on Mull the more energetic women will join our walk leader, Gill Williamson, on a beautiful hike with views over Mull & Iona. Some will opt for a wild swim, where we can provide wetsuits (it’s summer but still Scotland!), and others will opt for a seaview over lunch on Mull.
We also have a lot of women who stay in Oban for four to eight days to enjoy all that Oban has to offer. We hired a 12 person private boat for a day trip of a lifetime to the Treshnish Islands, Fingals Cave, Staffa, Coll & the famous town of Tobermory on Mull. Last year we had dolphins swim alongside the boat, then swam off white sand beaches, it could have been the Maldives in our September sunshine. Many women stay on for trips like this, to check out Oban Whiskey’s famous distillery, hire kayaks or just explore the many scenic walks around Oban & relax with their new friends.
A CEILIDH FULL OF QUEER WOMEN
Our ceilidh is also a highlight. LGBTQIA women are often terribly shy. At a ceilidh, you get the opportunity to dance with every woman on the dance floor, so it’s a great ice breaker. Instead of having the “gents” role in the Gay Gordons, our ceilidh caller asks the more butch woman to take that role. If you’ve never been to a ceilidh before, don’t worry, our ceilidh caller and team show everyone what to do and making mistakes and getting whirled to dizziness is all part of the fun.
Women also make a great effort to dress up in tartan for the ceilidh, and the winner from last year’s best ceilidh outfit competition has just enjoyed a free weekend holiday back in Oban.
Last year our sober social was really popular. Some of us don’t drink or only want a few drinks and love the fact that the focus isn’t on alcohol. They want to come to Oban for the amazing experiences, getting up to go paddle boarding, wild swimming or hiking. This year we have a local business doing a whiskey tasting session. We’ll also have the option to do this as a non-alcoholic whiskey tasting session.
We also have mini events across the UK, which are a great chance to meet others. Women are meeting in Glasgow this weekend. We also have camping and paddle boarding on Loch Lomond in May. We are really looking forward to welcoming back women who may come with friends they made last year, and new women, who are booking to come from all over the world.
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