Forsinard

To complete the account of my summer Scottish trip... From Duncansby Head I drove the east-coast road south to Wick, and then on to Helmsdale. I camped by the sea at Lothbeg. The next day, my last day in Scotland, I temporarily headed north once again, following the Helmsdale river as far as the RSPB Nature Reserve at Forsinard. I'd hoped to catch a glimpse of the rare red-throated diver, but didn't - though saw lots of skylarks and meadow pipits, hawker dragonflies, and plants like sphagnum moss and sundew, bogbean, bog asphodel and bog myrtle (which has a peppery, aromatic scent). You can see all these plants in the photos below...

I walked the short, flagstoned Dubh Lochan Trail, and then the 4 mile circular Forsinain Trail. Blanket bog stretched out as far as the eye could see. This peatland habitat has barely changed in the last 6000 years...

The Last House

My time in Scotland was nearly over. I had to get back for work by mid-August. So I hurried along the northern coast, edging from Sutherland into Caithness. Caithness, in the north-east corner of Scotland, rapidly became another of my favourite counties. Gradually I left the bare, isolated mountains of the far north-west and entered the flatter landscape of the Flow Country, Europe's largest blanket bog. Though much of the interior was desolate peatland, the cliffed coastline was constantly interesting. Along the coast and in shallow, sheltered valleys were square fields neatly dotted with big, round bales of freshly-cut hay. I passed grey and black, turreted castles guarding bleak, windswept settlements.

I skirted the nuclear power plant at Dounreay, looked down over Scrabster harbour (a ferry sails from here to the Orkney Islands), then stopped for a while in the tidy little sea-town of Thurso. This whole area was colonised by the Vikings, and Scandinavian influence still remains strong today. I spent a couple of absorbing hours in Thurso's brilliant new museum, Caithness Horizons, housed in the old Town Hall and Library building. On the ground floor you can see the Skinnet and Ulbster standing stones with their mysterious Pictish carvings; and on an upper floor there's a fascinating display dedicated to local geologist and botanist, Robert Dick.

Just east of Thurso, and beyond Dunnet Bay, stands the lighthouse at Dunnet Head, the most northely point of the Scottish mainland (see top pic). From here you can gaze out across the Pentland Firth at the Orkney Isles. You can identify quite clearly the Old Man Of Hoy (the famous rock stack much beloved of climbers) just off Hoy, Orkney's south-westerly island; and the entrance to Scapa Flow, that great natural harbour used by the Vikings more than a thousand years ago and more recently by British fleets during both World Wars.

It's not much further to John o' Groats, journey's end for most tourists and coach trippers, with its cafés, fast food stalls and souvenir shops, and its Last House in Scotland...

It's much more rewarding to make your way out to wildly beautiful Duncansby Head, just a few miles north-east of John o' Groats. From the cliff-top path you can approach nesting fulmars, their nests perched precariously on near-vertical cliff faces; the chicks, seeming almost bigger than their parents, were huge, grey-white balls of fluffy down. In some of the rocky bays seals trod water, basking - heads up - in the sun. Kittiwakes shrieked, gannets dived, and a small raft of 8 eider ducks floated close to shore.

These are the striking, needle-pointed sea stacks at Duncansby...

Ben Hope

The next day I left my tent pitched at Durness and took the coast road south-east to Loch Eriboll. The road - often single-track with passing places - wound round this magnificent loch to a river bridge. Just beyond the bridge a much narrower road headed south by the side of Loch Hope. At the end of the loch the mountains closed in. I parked my car in a small parking place in the glen of Strath More, put on my boots, adjusted my walking poles and set off up the steep western flank of Ben Hope, the most northerly Munro in Scotland.

On this recent Scottish trip my vague plan had been: to explore Scotland's western and northern coastline - perhaps visiting an island or two - and to climb three of Scotland's Munros, the most southerly, the most northerly and the highest. I'd achieved most of these things. I'd travelled the coast, crossed to the islands of Harris and Lewis, and summited on Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the British Isles. I hadn't climbed Ben Lomond, the most southerly Munro, because of torrential rain; I didn't fancy such a hard slog in the wet. So I was especially keen to make it to the top of Ben Hope, the highest point in the north. I was in luck, for the weather was fine.

I tracked a burn up the mountainside - past tumbling waterfalls and rocky platforms to ever lovelier heights - and half-way up met a toad which obligingly posed for a quick photo...

I was pleased my fitness levels had increased over the weeks, and I gained the top without too much difficulty - keeping up with a scattering of other hill walkers much younger than myself! From here the views were quite spectacular...

The Sky At Durness

After the delights of Sheigra and Sandwood I followed the broad, bare sweep of a glacial valley for several miles to the Kyle of Durness. The mountains of Foinavon and Arkle towered majestically in the east. I wanted to catch the last ferry of the day across the shallow waters of the Kyle to the Cape Wrath peninsula - but it had been cancelled. So I carried on a further few miles and pitched on the cliff-top campsite at Durness. This site overlooks a perfect family beach - of rock stacks, rockpools, silver sand and pristine cleanliness.

I spent much of the evening gazing up at the sky. Black and thunderous clouds raced from south-east to north-west - but, miraculously, the downpour never happened. A purple mantle hung over shifting layers of black, grey, white, pink and blue. A dying sun, low on the western horizon, bathed all in gold. It shone like a laser beam of piercing light, and every object - every leaf, rock, stone, street light, tent pole and campervan - stood out in ultra-defined clarity for a few moments. Then it was gone. I crawled backwards into my inner tent, manoeuvred jerkily into my sleeping bag, and zipped it up...

Sandwood

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. JOHN MUIR

The beach at Sandwood Bay in the far north west of Scotland is one of the loveliest you might ever hope to find, and this is much to do with its remoteness. You can reach it only on foot. You park in a small car park just south of Sheigra - the tiny inlet where I'd wildcamped the night. (There's a small toilet block there, with facilities for a wash and brush up and for filling your water bottles.) Opposite the car park begins a path which takes you 4 and a half miles across grassy, heathery peatland, past a series of jewel-like lochs, to Sandwood Bay.

It was early in the morning and there were few other walkers about. After a couple of hours I crossed the machair and descended seawards through sand dunes bristling with marram grass. A few rag-tag groups of beachcampers had already struck camp and were heading back towards 'civilisation'. By the time I'd placed my first footsteps on the fine, silvery sand, only one solitary tent remained. I had the mile-long beach practically to myself.

I made for an outlying platform of low rocks half-way between the bay's twin headlands (see pic), then perched on one of the rocks and scanned around with my binoculars. Oystercatchers probed for cockles and clams in the wet sand of the shoreline. Gannets thronged the skies above, gliding on stiff, black-tipped wings and plunging for fish in the turquoise ocean. As they dived, their wings folded back in a streamlined 'W' pattern. Lone cormorants flapped over the bay in direct, purposeful flight; others hung out their wings to dry on a distant sea stack, looking for all the world like giant vampire bats. Twice I briefly glimpsed a large, black and white shape in the water. No sooner did I focus on it than it submerged again. Could this have been an orca, or killer whale? It's quite possible - there are regular sightings of killer, minke, humpback and other whales, not to mention basking sharks, dolphins and porpoises, round this part of the Scottish coast.

I turned away from the water's edge, and walked beyond the strandline and behind the dunes to sheltered Sandwood Loch. Here eight ringed plover scurried along the shingle rim of the loch, teasing out invertebrates among the stones. Every so often, after a spell of frenzied motion, they would freeze, their brown and white feathers and black and white heads (resembling highwayman's masks) merging perfectly with the pebbled background of the loch's foreshore. It was so tranquil here, so unspoilt, so utterly beautiful - I almost felt I'd reached the very gates of Paradise itself.

(Like Ben and Glen Nevis, the Sandwood Estate is owned and managed by the John Muir Trust. It's a very special, indeed unique place. There are two main types of rock: Torridonian Sandstone - formed around 600 million years ago - and Lewisian Gneiss, which is 2 - 3000 million years old. The pattern of rivers and lochs, cliffs and bays, humps and hollows tell a tale of moving glaciers and melting ice during the last Ice Age - a mere 10,000 years ago. The strip of grassland along the coast, known as the machair, supports an astonishing variety of plants and insects (200 kinds of wild flower have been recorded, including eight orchid varieties), and it's also home to such uncommon birds as the twite and the corncrake, and the increasingly rare skylark. Today, amongst the human inhabitants, crofting and fishing are continuing, important sources of employment, and the Estate has fifity-four working crofts.)

Beautiful In A New Way

Norman MacCaig had a friend in Inverkirkaig (where he spent his summers for many years) called Angus MacLeod. When his friend died, he wrote a moving sequence of poems in his memory - Poems For Angus.

A. K. MacLeod

I went to the landscape I love best
and the man who was its meaning and added to it
met me in Ullapool.

The beautiful landscape was under snow
and was beautiful in a new way.

Next morning the man who had greeted me
with the pleasure of pleasure
vomited blood
and died.

Crofters and fishermen and womenfolk, unable
to say any more, said,
'It's a grand day, it's a beautiful day.'

And I thought, 'Yes it is.'
And I thought of him lying there,
the dead centre of it all.

This affects me deeply. It's so bare and simple and understated. And what a truth MacCaig recognizes when he writes of the village people not knowing what to say - except to comment on the weather. I think we can all understand this. For words are inadequate in the face of death. Perhaps we can say more through some homely truism or short comment such as 'It's a grand day' - or through silence - than we ever could through some wordy lament or grandiloquent speech.

A Man In Assynt

Who owns this landscape?-/The millionaire who bought it or/the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning/with a deer on his back?/Who possesses this landscape?-/The man who bought it or/I who am possessed by it? NORMAN MACCAIG A Man In Assynt

Just north of Ullapool is the National Nature Reserve at Knochan Crag. I drove there on the Monday I returned from Lewis, and idled round the short nature trail which winds across this geologically famous cliff. Every now and then you stumble upon minimalist rock sculptures and fragments of Noman MacCaig's poetry set in stone. From the top of the crag you look out over an extensive, glaciated, grey-blue, grey-green world of scoured valleys, bare, rugged mountains and tiny lochans. This ancient, deserted landscape - it's the parish of Assynt in the Scottish region of west Sutherland - contains some of the oldest rocks to be found anywhere. And, in nearby caves, the bones of extinct bears, wolves and reindeer have been discovered.

Deserted. Or, more accurately, cleared. For, in 18th and 19th century Highland Scotland, a forced evacuation of the peasant population took place with even more devastating effect than that produced by the English Enclosure Acts (which I've written about before). Scottish landowners - in a bid to improve profitability by turning huge areas of land over to sheep farming - ran roughshod over the old, cottage-economy, crofting culture of the Highlands. Whole communities were broken up and scattered to lowland and coastal areas. Entire populations of hills and valleys emigrated westwards (which is why one meets so many people of Scottish descent in the Americas - from Canada to Patagonia). Poverty, economic forces, the process of clearance and other self-interested acts by a relatively small number of rich, private landowners - these are the reasons why this part of Scotland is so depopulated. Although some landowners were comparatively benign, and tried to create a sustainable life for their tenants under the new farming system, others were notoriously cruel - such as the 19th century Countess of Sutherland, who quite literally burned crofters out of their homes, and whose name, even today, is mentioned only in hushed, shocked tones by present-day Sutherlanders.

I continued through this vast, humbling landscape, in the shadow of the Ben More massif, to the castle of Ardvreck, romantically situated on the northern shore of Loch Assynt (see pic). I paused a while and explored its ruined tower. It's beautiful there, with the rocky fortress of Quinag to the north, and the distinctive peaks and ridges of Canisp and Suilven to the south. At the end of the glen is the little fishing village of Lochinver, and just to the south of Lochinver, on the road to Inverpolly Lodge and Altandhu, lies Inverkirkaig, at the head of Loch Kirkaig - a sheltered sea inlet into which the lively river Kirkaig flows. It was here the poet Norman MacCaig spent his summers fishing in the lochs and lochans, and no doubt honing his fine, pithy poems - full of verve and wit - as he cast his line.

I pressed on round the rocky, indented coast of Assynt, through Clachtoll, Clashnessie and Drumbeg - along a narrow track of infinite bends and endless ups-and-downs - until I finally joined the A894, which took me to Scourie and Laxford Bridge. When I reached Kinlochverbie it was already late afternoon. A minor road led from here northwards, past tiny, cliff-top settlements, to Sheigra, my day's destination. I drove slowly down a bumpy track and parked on the machair overlooking a small sandy beach and the sea. Here I wildcamped. It was very peaceful. There was only a handful of other tents dotted discretely about the bay. Later I climbed the bay's northern headland - its firm gneiss rock was comfortingly grippy - and gazed out over the wind-chopped Atlantic. Some climbers appeared from nowhere at my feet - they'd been bouldering and free climbing out of sight on the sea-cliffs below. It was the most wonderful place, and only 12 miles from Cape Wrath, the most north-westerly point on the British mainland...

(Richard Baker's picture of Ardvreck Castle is available from Wikipedia under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License.)

That Old-Time Religion: The Opiate Of The People?

I spent my last day on Lewis in Stornoway (Steònabhagh in Gaelic), the burgh where one third of the island's 26,000 inhabitants live. I pitched my tent on Laxdale Lane's small, immaculate campsite, then washed some clothes and hung them out to dry on a line I'd strung between the branches of a nearby tree. Rain had threatened in the early morning but had managed to hold off. Clouds were still massing, but the sun popped out from time to time, and there was a warm, welcome breeze.

I took a stroll across town in the general direction of the harbour. It was Sunday and the place was dead. Not a shop, not a bar, not a café was open. Bizarrely, the only money changing hands in the whole of Stornoway was in the public toilets - where an attendant demanded 20p for the use of his pristine facilities. I roamed aimlessly through deserted streets. Apart from the occasional scream of gulls, the only sounds came from the churches: a congregation's swell of voices, a preacher's hectoring boom.

Religion is big here on Lewis. Strict observance of the Sabbath is still adhered to. Traditions are ingrained, preserved like the bog corpses which are sometimes dug out of the surrounding peatland - proudly-kept traditions such as crofting, turf cutting, speaking Gaelic. A deep strain of Calvinistic Presbyterianism holds sway, particularly amongst the older generation. Even the smallest settlements often have their own church - crude, not pretty buildings, but generously proportioned, dominating the rest of the village. Scottish Presbyterians believe in hard work, abstemiousness, simplicity - the extravagance of ornate, expansive church architecture would offend their moral rigour. In these austere churches the decor must not detract from the business of worship.

The Presbyterian Church of Scotland was founded by John Knox (a follower of Calvin) in 1560 as a consequence of the Scottish Reformation and the break from Rome. Unlike the Church of England, it's completely independent of the 'state'. In its fervent desire that everyone should read the Bible, the Church promoted the idea of universal, public education - and Scotland became the first country in the world to adopt such a system.

Over the following centuries, various splinter group churches formed and reformed, seceded and reunited. There is now a plethora of Presbyterian denominations - the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland, the United Free Church, the United Free Church of Scotland, the Associated Presbyterian Churches... Don't ask me to make sense of it all! Suffice to say that all these churches are united in their belief in education and life-long learning, and put a strong emphasis on Bible study and church doctrine. But they also keenly advocate turning passive knowledge into informed action: there are firm traditions of generosity and hospitality, the pursuit of social justice, and the witnessing of Christ's Gospel.

In the afternoon I took a delightful saunter through the grounds of Lews Castle - the only deciduous woodland on Lewis. This was the country house built for the businessman-philanthropist, Sir James Matheson, in the mid-nineteenth century - and paid for with his profits from the Chinese Opium Trade. (Matheson went into partnership with one William Jardine, and this was the origin of today's Jardine Matheson company - which still maintains such a strong presence in Hong Kong and the Far East. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the company's present promotional literature erases any reference to opium, upon which the fortunes of the firm were built.)

Whether the influence of Matheson - who actually owned the whole island before selling it to Lord Leverhulme in 1918 - was baleful or benign is a controversial issue in Lewis to this day. Though I think it's beyond dispute that Matheson did much to alleviate the islanders' one-time starvation and poverty - the result of a potato famine.

There are several water mills on Lewis, and I came across one on Matheson's old estate (now belonging to the democratic Stornoway Trust) at Lews Castle. Its overshot water wheel has been painstakingly restored - the wheel fed by a reconstructed leat which channels water from a nearby stream (see top pic). The mill stones - vertically positioned - were used to grind grain, and the grain was dried in kilns. Other mills (Norse mills, saw mills, carding mills) in the area had horizontally placed grinding stones. Anyone who read the recent post I wrote on my father will not be surprised at my more-than-casual interest in these pre-industrial mills...

Early next morning I took the ferry back to Ullapool. I could have caught one a day earlier - on the Sunday - as Calmac, the ferry company, had just won a decades-long battle with the religiously entrenched authorities on Lewis to allow a Sunday crossing. But I decided to leave on the Monday. Just for old times' sake...

The Standing Stones At Calanais

One of the most remarkable sights on Harris and Lewis is the standing stone complex at Calanais (Callanish). These ancient megaliths are black, white, grey, pink, green-lichened. They are all different shapes - like people. They stand defiantly upright, but their strata strain to the horizontal. Tourists gaze uncomprehendingly in the rain.

We know the world in shorthand, through a veil. Much travelled we may be - but how deeply travelled? We tick off the landmarks - but do we look beyond? Do we really know the first thing about the places we visit?

There are many theories and suppositions about Calanais, but actually we know nothing for sure about the true purpose and significance of these haunting monoliths.

Rodel: Honest Error And Icy Perfections

Leaving Uig, I drove south through South Lewis and onto the Isle of Harris. As I headed into the mountains the rain fell ever more heavily. Agnes Maclennan had been right. I stopped in the small fishing and ferry port of Tarbert and ate some venison sausages and mash in a pub. Then I took the coastal route round Harris. Harris is wild, mountainous, magnificent. On the west side there are splendid beaches. On the east side it's even more remote, the coastline more indented, the narrow, single-track road more challenging. I drove slowly, scattering small flocks of wheatears and grey wagtails as I passed. Sheep grazed at the edge of the road and sometimes wandered into the middle of it. The east side looks like this...

On the tip of Harris stands the church at Rodel. It was built around 1500, rebuilt in 1784, then restored in 1873...

The dark, atmospheric interior is quite empty except for the tombs of 3 armoured knights carved in black gneiss. You can see one of these tombs on the left in my pic...

I climbed the tower (square-shaped - very unusual for these parts) via a gloomy, stone staircase then 2 vertical wooden ladders. At the top were 3 lancet windows facing north, south and west, each with a deep recess. In each recess visitors had left little notes - containing prayers, personal messages, spiritual observations and homespun philosophies...

One of these hand-written reflections struck me with the force of a lightning bolt. I memorized it, then later wrote it down. Here it is verbatim: "There is hope in honest error, none in icy perfections or the mere stylist..." I don't know who wrote this, whether it's a quote from anyone, or whether the writer was inspired to scribble it on the spot. But it certainly inspired me that rainy day in Harris, on my own, at the top of a church tower, on a far-flung island, miles from anywhere. Perhaps 'error' is not such a bad thing, even a noble thing, if it is 'honest'? And perfection, or the striving towards perfection, can be such a cold, heartless and 'icy' thing, can it not?

I wonder if you who are reading this identify more with 'honest error' or more with 'icy perfections'? Be honest! I know I'm heart and soul in the former camp... But I also know I have a wilful perfectionist streak in me too...

'Style' alone is just cleverness, surface gloss. It's what's behind the style that counts - the substance behind the seductive, flickering shadow, the narrative behind the verbal and artistic trickery...

Castles in Camas Uig

Early next morning I went to Camas Uig (or Uig Bay - 'camas' means 'bay' in Gaelic) - just a few miles west of Cnip. I left my tent pitched at Cnip, wanting to stay there another night. Camas Uig is one of the wonderful places of Lewis (and, believe me, Lewis has many wonderful places)...

Before my arrival someone had left a temporary fortification on the broad sands of the bay...

But mine seemed to be the the only footmarks. That is, until these two people appeared... The bridged stream drains the freshwater loch of Loch Suaineabhal, which lies between the peaks of Suaineabhal and Cleite Leathann...

In a sand dune somewhere at the head of this bay was discovered the collection of 12th century chess pieces which later became known as the Lewis Chessman or the Uig Chessman. Exactly where and when they were found, who found them and whence they came remains something of a mystery. But what's beyond doubt is that they are the most exquisitely beautiful objects - 78 pieces in all, carved from walrus ivory and whales' teeth. They were probably made in Norway (the Outer Hebrides were ruled by the Vikings during that period). The British Museum in London holds some of the figures, and Edinburgh's Royal Museum the rest.

(As usual, please double-click on the pix to enlarge.)

Cnip

It was early evening when I reached the campsite at Cnip (pronounced 'neep'), a small crofting community on Lewis's western coast. You have to be fairly dedicated to get there. You turn off the A858 just beyond the standing stones at Calanais, and follow the recently improved B8011 across a wild landscape of lochs, lochans and grey-green hills. Rocks of Lewisian gneiss stick up through thin, acidic soil. It's true wilderness here, empty, elemental; shaped over eons of time by the raw, brute forces of nature.

The weather had become rainy and blustery, but it was still pleasantly warm (Lewis has a moist, mild climate, with no great extremes between its summer and winter temperatures). Eventually you branch off along a narrow, minor road which unrolls by one of Loch Rog's slender inlets. It then follows a short, stark, river valley, and winds through the tiny, windswept, coastal settlements of Cliobh and Bhaltos, until finally finishing up at Cnip.

There was an end-of-the-world feel to the place. If you discount the more southerly isles of the Outer Hebrides, you can't get much further west in Britain than this: there's nothing but ocean between here and the Labrador coast of Canadian Newfoundland.

I pitched my tent behind the dunes on the machair - a flat, grassy strip carpeted with wild flowers. Occasionally the sun broke through chinks in the cloud and illuminated dazzling white sand, aqua blue water and the little islands in Traigh na Beirigh bay. Later I found Agnes Maclennan from the Cnip Village Grazing Trust assiduously cleaning the campsite's small shower and toilet block. She spoke English with a soft, Gaelic-inflected accent. "You should have been here these past few weeks," she said. "The most wonderful weather. But I fear the rain has now set in."

Butts, Brochs And Blackhouses

One Friday morning I took the Calmac car ferry from Ullapool to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis...

Lewis is the largest and most northerly island in the archipelago of the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. (Actually it's joined by a narrow isthmus to the Isle of Harris further south, so the two 'isles' are in fact one complete island - known as Lewis and Harris.) Most of Lewis is flat, featureless terrain, a plateau of peat stretching from horizon to horizon. Peat cutting has always been an important part of the island's frugal economy, and you can see now and again stacks of cut turves from the roadside...

I followed the straight western coastal road right up to the Butt of Lewis, the island's most northerly point. The landscape was desolate and treeless, buffeted by North Atlantic gales. It took some getting used to after the majestic peaks and troughs of the Scottish Highlands. At the Butt fulmars and kittiwakes had colonised the high sea cliffs and gannets divebombed the choppy ocean. (Amazing how the gannets' wings fold back just before hitting the water - perfect aerodynamics!) Here was an abandoned lighthouse, designed by David Stevenson, uncle of the writer and adventurer Robert Louis Stevenson, one of my favourite childhood writers, author of Kidnapped and Treasure Island and A Child's Garden Of Verses - and, of course, Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes, one of the books which fed my own emerging wanderlust...

Travelling south again I reached the isolated crofting community of Arnol and its cluster of deserted blackhouses. Most are in ruins, but one of these long, low cottages is preserved in Arnol's Blackhouse Museum. It's built in the traditional way with thick, drystone walls packed with earth, wooden rafters and a thatch of turf and straw. See from my pic how the roof is roped down against the wind...

In these old crofting houses man and livestock shared the same space. The living room stood next to the byre - sometimes without a partition. The floors were of flagstones or compacted earth. An open peat fire burned in the centre of the living room, and the smoke percolated up through the roof. There was no chimney. This helped dry the thatch and killed off any bugs. Why were they called 'blackhouses'? Perhaps because they were dark and smoky places. Or perhaps because of a confusion between the Gaelic words dubh (black) and tughadh (thatch)...

A little further south I came upon the broch of Dun Carloway. (You'll recall my previous post on the brochs of Dun Telve and Dun Troddan...)

It was getting late in the day, and I still hadn't found a campsite in this barren and windswept wilderness...

Almost All The Way Up Stac Pollaidh

The next day I climbed Stac Pollaidh which lies just north west of Ullapool in the Inverpolly Forest. Of course the forest is a forest no longer. It's a vast, bare, open landscape of lochs and lochans, peat bogs and isolated mountains. Though Stac Pollaidh ('Peak of the Peat Moss') is little more than 2000 ft, it seems higher as it's not hemmed in by other hills. From the top the views are tremendous. To the west are the sea and the Summer Isles; to the north, south and east stretch the wilderness areas of Assynt, Coigach and the Cromalt Hills. And you can clearly pick out the mountain peaks of Suilven and Canisp, Cul Mòr and Cul Beag.

Stac Pollaidh is easily accessed from the road which runs along Loch Lurgainn at its foot. There's a well-maintained path to the top which I climbed without too much difficulty. I'd obviously got fitter since my travails on Ben Nevis! The eastern top is simply reached, but the higher, western top can only be gained by a scramble up rocky gullies, slabs and pinnacles. I enjoyed the scrambling - the Torridonian sandstone was firm and grippy - but I'm afraid fear got the better of me in the end when I came to a short, but exposed, near-vertical rockface. So I didn't quite make it to the highest point. (For an experienced scrambler this would have been a piece of cake - there were plenty of holds - but I didn't want to take the risk, as I was wary of getting into trouble, being on my own. I would have gone for it if a mate had been with me.) Anyway, that's quite enough talk about my sensible discretion (or cowardice? Afterwards I wished I'd gone 'all the way'...) Let the pictures now do the talking...

Before returning to my Ullapool campsite, I drove west a few miles and came upon this superb, pristine sweep of sand at Achnahaird. Here a shallow river runs from bogland into one of the narrow inlets of Enard Bay. The sun had come out and the water sparkled, changing colour from light to dark as your eye followed it to the sea, first sandy brown, then turquoise, finally aquamarine. Near the shore purple patches of water shimmered over submerged, weed-encrusted rocks. The subtle spectrum of colour and constantly shifting light in North West Scotland is simply astonishing; no wonder so many artists are attracted to this place...

Gairloch To Ullapool

From Gairloch to the Garden of Inverewe, Scotland's finest garden, situated on a promontory jutting out into Loch Ewe. Despite sharing the same latitude as Canada's Newfoundland and St Petersburg in Russia, Inverewe has a temperate climate - for it's warmed by the mild waters of the Gulf Stream. So lots of diverse plants can grow here. The rhododendron and eucalyptus collections are particularly prized. I spent several hours in this plant paradise, wandering the woodland walks in perfect contentment...

Later that day, after viewing the 'box' gorge of Corrieshalloch from a wobbly suspension bridge...

... I pitched my tent by the loch in Ullapool...