For Chris’s final weekend in Scotland, we headed up to the Applecross peninsula on the North-West coast. For those of you not familiar with it, it’s on the mainland, across from Skye.
The journey up through Glencoe and so forth is always pretty spectacular, and was part of the reason I had been banging on to Chris about how amazing it was for the past month. The road into Applecross itself is the ‘Bealach na Bà’ which is the third highest road in Scotland, as well as being some sort of Guinness record holder for the steepest ascent from sea level within a certain distance. Pictures don’t do it justice.
On the recommendation of my pal Gina, we opted to stay in a ‘wishbone hut’.
Pretty smart.
There was no mobile reception anywhere. I won’t witter on about how ‘nice’ it was to be far away and disconnected blahblahblah. The truth is, it just felt weird to have something that we rely on so much every day reduced to a useless chunk of plastic. Rather than being freeing, it just felt very matter of fact.
The views were pretty amazing.
It felt like time went at a different rate in this place. The sheep brazenly wandered around the tiny hillside roads (a local informed us that they would move if you shouted ‘mint sauce’), and on one walk through the forest, me and Chris came within spitting distance of a bunch of deer. Rather than run like they might in the central belt, they just stared us down until we passed by.
This is Jenn Donn making breakfast.
I even ate some eggs, which is highly unusual. I must be getting old.
One of the ‘landmarks’ on the map was the ‘standing stones’. Turns out that it’s actually a single stone, rather than a plural, and is so easy to miss that somebody had come up with a sign to point out where the thing is.
See that tiny bump on the hill?
Aye, that’s it.
We have no idea what the significance of this stone is, but we took pictures with it anyway.
It better not be cursed.
We found this beautiful sandy bit.
and naturally decided to run up the cliff.
It was a lot higher and steeper than it looks here.
I’m still finding sand in weird places now.
After the strenuous activity that was climbing up the dune, we clearly had earned food, beer, and scrabble.
Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky;
Campbeltown Loch, Och aye.
Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky;
I would drink you dry.
(That’s Campbeltown Loch whisky that Euan has)
We stopped by Eilean Donan Castle for a picture or two.
It was nice to go away with this pair. Not only did Jenn Donn trust me to drive her car (although she did shout at me a few times for going too fast), but Euan is a legend. We both wound her up about Scotland’s future as an independent nation fairly well.
…and with that, that was Scotland. Go back and tell everyone how awesome we are Chris, cheers.
