Best hot Chocolate ever!

This morning we woke up in a cloudy world. But it was dry. So we made a litle fire for coffee and had breakfast with mueslybars and Raiders. We decided it wasn’t wise to go up the mountains in this fogg, so we packed up our stuff and headed back to Tos.

Somewhere behind this rock was our camp.

Back at the van we had some more coffe before starting the route of today. Along mountains and the sea towards Kinlochbervie.

After Kinlochbervie the road turned into a single track with passing places through a valley full of sheep.

Watch the sheep along and on the road

Large touring cars take the whole width of the single track

Just before Durness we went to Keoldale to see if we could take the ferry to the other side of the Kyle of Durness. A very remote area with only one sandy road through it. Turned out the ferry was only for walkers and bycicles. On the other side you could do an organized tour in a minivan. Noting for us, so we drove further.

Modern standing stone to remember the ancient inhabitants


Isn’t he beautiful 😊


Ducks 🦆 crossing

In the little vilage of Balnakeil, just besides Durness, we visited Cocoa Mountain. An award winning chocolatier and cafe, famous for their hot chocolate. We really needed to find out if it was that good, and yesss it was!

Balnakeil itself is a crafts place consisting of three houses, two galleries, a restaurant and Cocoa Mountain.

Boat scrap yard

Ready for hot chocolate

Review of Cocoa Mountain

Yummy

After filling our tummies with chocolate we went to the campsite in Durness and found a nice spot with sea view. Maybe we visit the local pub later tonight and then tomorrow we go to visit Smoo cave.

2 beauties

Our spot at the camping site


Our neighbours must carry some fish 😂

A very rainy hike

Today we want to go hiking to visit the Eas a’ Chùal Aluin waterfall. A six hour hike in total.

This is the plan

Our guide

Altitude aling the track

Driving towards the starting point we passed this nice ruin of a castle, so we stopped for a little walk and to have a look.

Nice view along the way

Ardvreck castle

It took some searching to find the start of the track and the right parking spot, but around 15.00 we were ready to start hiking. The weather was looking good, some clouds over the mountain, but nothing really to worry about.

We found the start of the path

On our way

After an hour or so it started to rain a bit, we considered going back, but stubborn as we are we walked on. Not much later the first real rain of the week poured down and it didn’t take to long to get soaking wet. So we decided to put up camp and call it a day.

Hiding for the rain in our micro tent

And so we were laying in our tiny tent hoping for the rain to stop. If it would get dry we could make a little fire and have some soup, otherwise it would be Raiders and mueslybars for diner.

Luckily the rain stopped after an hour or so, wich meant we could go outside and make a little campfire to cook some water for our noodles and some coffee with whisky afterwards.

Our nature stove

Diner 😁

Campfire

Our camp for the night

After diner we tried to keep a litle campfire going, but with no trees around wood was hard to find. So keeping the fire burning was a bit of a challange, but we did, kind of.

Because the sun started to shine again we tried to dry all of our wet clothes. We didn’t put our raining clothes on at the first drops because it was so warm, now al our clothes were sooking wet, lesson for the next walk. Luckily we had our thermo underwear with us, so we had some dry clothes. It felt a bit funny sitting at the campfire in our underwear, but there was nobody who could see us, so who cares.

Then we waited for the sun to sett and went to bed afterwards. 

Good night 

A day in Ullapool.

For the first time this holliday we had to get up early because of the boat trip along the summer islands. We were there early enough to have some coffee before leaving. 
The blue one is the one we took

The first part of the trip was quite nice, we saw a withe tale eagle, some common seals, a few harbour dolphins ( the small once we call bruinvis in Holland) and lots of jelly fish in all sorts.

Seals on the shore

More seals on the rocks

In the tree sits the eagle, well camouflaged

Jelly fish

After that it became a less interesting. Beautifull views, but no dolphins or orca’s. Just a lot of birds.

Cathedral Cave


Bird watching over its nest 

The black dot is the jong bird in the nest.

Seagull

Back at the harbour we felt a bit hungry so we went to the pub to have some lunch. Tanguy had the Highland burger, wich turned out to be a doudle burger containing one burger of meat and one burger of Haggis. It tasted very good. 

A beer to go along with the burgers

The highland burger.

We walked back to the campsite for a quiet afternoon and some diner. There was a beautifull sunset again.

After the sun went down we walked back into town for some more beers. It was very quiet, eventough it is a friday. But we found a pub which was a bit more lively and had a beer.