G & J away from home

Saturday, 2 July 2016

Afternoon

Afternoon drive (taking somewhat longer that 3 hours 40 minutes)

On the understanding that the journey over the 3-mile track to Melvaig would be taken very, very slowly we set out to have a drive around - GPS destination Lochcarron only because this was the furthest point in our vague plans.  We tootled off down the track and pulled over to let fellow lighthouse guests Rob and Jan pass us so we could dawdle along at a speed sympathetic to my gall bladder which, coincidentally, allowed Gary to admire the view as well as drive.

We bounced along to Melvaig, and then on as far as this derelict house near the road where Rob, an artist, had stopped to take photos:

Abandoned house (Photo: Gary)

Since much of this driving was in second gear and what with the photos stops it seemed like we would be unlikely to ever reach Lochcarron so there was no harm in making a couple of stops in Gairloch for lunch (and a bit of shopping in the bookshop attached to the cafe).

The road after Gairloch is fairly good though 'fairly good' on this part of the trip means that it is generally two lanes wide instead of the more common single lane with regular passing places.  (By comparison the track between Melvaig and the lighthouse would probably be described as being barely a lane wide with very few passing places and a continually undulating surface.)  Since the road was so good (and we had been over it before) I might possibly have had a little snooze during this part of the drive.

Despite my rather pessimistic predictions about the visit to the lighthouse we were on our second day of sunshine.  Though there had been a few showers on the day we arrived and today there has been plenty of sunshine and haven't affected us much.  It's certainly not as cold as I feared especially since (as I read in the info at the lighthouse) there is no land between this point and the North Pole!

As we did yesterday we stopped to take a photo of the view down Glen Docherty to the fresh-water Loch Maree but this time we pulled into the parking space rather than stopping in the middle of the road and this technique proved much less stressful.

Looking down to Loch Maree

For some time we've been noticing the deer fencing and we have been assured that we were right in assuming in Scotland the fencing is to keep the deer out rather than in.  Many of the fences here have stiles over them which not in the traditional shape but more like wooden stairs up and then down the other side and the deer fences are no exception - although they are much taller:

Stile over deer fence

Eventually we reached Lochcarron and then drove on toward Shieldaig.

Shieldaig

Along the road (which was more often as not of the single lane with passing spaces variety) there were the turn offs to Applecross - location of the tv programme Monty Hall's Great Escape.  I had quite enjoyed watching the series as well as the subsequent 'escapes' and had plans to make the drive to Applecross and back across the mountains.  (The mountains we could see on this stretch of the drive were very stark and quite intimidating, looming over the coastline.)  The Rua Reidh website says this about the drive:

". . . travel round the Applecross peninsula and the drive of your life, as you negotiate the steep zig-zag bends of the Bealach Na Ba, one of the highest roads in Britain. Not for the faint hearted, but the views from the top over the Isle of Skye are worth it!"

We were a little put off by the map representation of both the mountain road and coast road as being even smaller than those we were on. "They're not roads," Gary insisted, "they're sheep tracks."

Instead we kept on toward Torridon.  I am claiming a book reference TICK for both Torridon (Marie Muir's four Torridon books) and for sea lochs (Elsie Oxenham's Scottish titles, Elinor Lyon's Ian and Sovra books).  The scenery was always beautiful and apparently the area is a national park.  We saw some reforestation schemes in action and I was surprised at the variety of trees being planted - variety in both species and ages.

Lake with grass (Photo: Gary)

More lochs (Photo: Gary)

Single lane road with passing places (Photo: Gary)

The return journey along the now familiar nine miles from Gairloch to Melvaig and three very slow miles from Malvaig to the Rua Reidh got us home well in time for another great meal at the lighthouse.


P.S.  During this drive Gary's phone had great signal and we had taken the laptop to go online using my phone as a personal hotspot.  Sadly my phone insisted there was no service (despite my desperately checking every one of its many settings) - until we were somewhere around Shieldaig where it suddenly informed me I had 12 new emails.  I cleared the junk mail first, then whipped through the emails saving until last the one I was looking forward to reading the most - the 'cat report' from home.  Just as I went to read it the phone went back to insisting there was no signal and has stubbornly remained that way since and I have been (tragically) been only able to look at the header ever since.  The moral to this story is: eat pudding first; always.

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