We had some very pleasant nights staying with Tim & Gace at their Grasmore B&B in Portree on the Isle of Skye. It was very to easy to feel comfortable in their home. Tim is a professional landscape photographer, so we had a couple of things to talk about. Anyone who is looking for a nice place to stay should visit Grasmore.
While we felt a bit sorry to go, we were glad to leave before some 110 km per hour winds arrived on the following day. It was raining steadily as we left and this continued with string winds for most of the day. The temperature hung around 9 to 11 degrees. Today, we are headed to Laide, just a little north of Gairloch on Scotland’s north west coast.
We drove back to the bridge at Kyle of Lochaish and dropped Ruth at the station so that she could continue on her part of her trip to London. We had no choice then, but to drive in Ruthlessly.
We drove around Loch Carron and Loch Kishorn to the tiny settlement of Tornapress. From there, we took the narrow winding road across some rugged and steep mountains to Applecross, one of the most remote villages in Scotland. The road was only wide enough for one car, but had passing places every 300 -400 meters. The local ritual seemed to be to flash your headlights at oncoming
cars to tell them that you were stopping at a passing place and they could come through and then to exchange waves, or a raising of one finger form the steering wheel to say thanks. It was a very interesting road with high peaks, switchback corners and narrow passes. It would have been stunning with less cloud and fine weather.
It was a delight to get to the little inn at Applecross and sit in the bar for lunch with dozens of other people eating all seeking relief from the weather and the warmth of the fire. There were a couple of people driving open sports cars and they had simply covered their parked car with a large golf umbrella which was tied down with octopus straps.
Back on the main road, we continued past Loch Maree to Gairloch. By now the weather had cleared a little and we were able to take a few photos of the rock outcrops in this rugged environment. We were interested to see a large bay at the sea loch of Lochewe and a lot of old military infrastructure. This was a secret location in WWII, where the Russian convoys formed. As the information board said, “there were enough ships moored here at any one time, that a person could almost walk across the bay without getting their feet wet”.
Getting wet was pretty much the order of the day, but we did manage to sneak in a few photos of the day that show the type of country through which we travelled.
Today was the day on which a nutty American religious group had predicted that the world would end. We passed one house whose occupants were clearly prepared for a flood (last photo). We are glad that we can get all the value from the costs of this trip rather than having to finish it part way because God was going to intervene!
