Purple flowered thistle, festooned with orange butterflies.
Rolling hillsides with crumbling stone walls sinking back into the soft peat.
Steep cliffs with swooping birds riding the winds, their young huddled on rock ledges.
Low stone cottages with yellow lichen running down the roof.
Rocky bays with seal heads bopping above the waves.
Roofless villages beside abandoned harbours, the herring boom has been and gone.
Wild, wind swept beaches with yellow sand and cold surf rolling in.
Bagpipes and snare drums, tipsy band members leaving the games, Jameson bottle in hand.
Woolly sheep wandering over the land, watching you as you pass. The fleece hanging off in clumps, no market for wool here. Fat tails wagging as the run away.
Small stone bridges arching over peat tainted streams.
Soft, spongy ground underfoot with tiny purple flowers, bracken and heathers clumped around boulders.
Purple, green and browns of peat bogs with pools of still water.
Cattle grids across the road with fences few and far in between.
Steep rocky crags, the west coast is dramatically different to the east.
Lochs of all shapes and sizes, different altitudes too. Deep still waters, dark coloured.
Numerous islands, both at sea and on Lochs. Mostly bare, occasionally with a small stone building on the waters edge.
A pub full of locals listening to live music, drinking and laughing. A tartan carpet underfoot.
Passing places to negotiate oncoming traffic. A narrow winding road promising new sights to see.
Waterfalls and waterfalls and waterfalls, mostly small. The ground is sodden underfoot.
Blue mountains, their peaks shrouded in cloud.
Glacial rocks, standing out from the crowd.
Clouds of Scottish Midges, waiting to bite you. People wearing netting headwear, every inch of flesh covered.
Peat bricks stacked on the roadside.
Deer watching us cautiously, and leaping away at a noise.
Wide, wild vistas across the hilltops, with so many Lochs in sight.
Red moss and blue lichen.
Red telephone boxes. Cellphone coverage not something to take for granted.
Scotland has old, old bones. I stand on a rock that is 1000 million years old. I peer at worm fossils from close to the South Pole.
Day by day notes:
4th August- drove along top of Scotland, pausing regularly and stayed in a campground beside a pub in Mervich. Wifi in bar. Young band playing music, fiddle, banjo, guitars, accordion, flutes. Mum singing along sometimes. Old Scottish folk songs.
5th August- Carrying on along the top. The landscape turns to peat, peaks, craggy bluffs and numerous lochs. The weather is wild and suits the terrain. Tomorrow we’ll turn south. Free camping on the banks of the Kyle of Durness.
Learned that Scotland was part of North America until the continental drift and it then crashed into England and Wales. I think they wish they could disconnect themselves again.
6th August – we head south, going around the first of two ‘caution, not for large RV roads’. Can see why and it’s not your own driving you have to think about but the other road users too. Going to have to make a call about the next optional road because it’s a really challenging one, spoken in hushed tones. Lunch at Clashnessie and the rain stopped just in time. Rain starts again so we move on. Free camping at Knockan Crag. If the rain would stop we’d go for a walk.
7th August- morning walk along the cliff top. Deer watching us and information about the tectonic upthrust meaning older rock is on top of younger rock. Coffee in Ullapool. Lots of photo stops. The terrain is always giving amazing and differing vistas. Stay the night in a carpark with a ‘tame’ wild 13 pointer stag. He’s old and has no teeth so a local comes up and feeds him soft food every evening.
8th August- morning hike, so remote. Drive the C road around the coast to Applecross. Lunch in the pub with wifi.
BAGGAB 