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. 

Seals and dolphins

Today we left the Big Sand behind, but not before some pictures of the film set equipment. Is was not for Outlander, but a Mazda car. 

Mazda promotion

After that we got on the road towards Ullapool, hoping to be able to book a whale watching trip from there.

The road alternated along the coast and inland. Views varied so much, one moment we were looking at the sea, one minute later it felt like we were somewere in the stone age. 

Driving through these rough lands I remembered a story a Scotsman once told me about the beginning of Scotland; It was at the seventh day, when God just finished creating the world. His hands all dirty from making land, rocks and mountains. He sat down overlooking his creation. Then he shook the dirt and rocks off his tired hands, and where these rocks and dirt fell down is what we now call Scotland. Driving through the mountains today, passing the An Teallach, the Shurr Mor and Beinn Dearg it was very easy to believe that what this man told me is true.

In Drumchork we stopped to visit the Loch Ewe distillery, said to be the smallest distillery of Scotland. It took some searching before we found it, just to find out that it was closed.

Loch Ewe distillery

At the end of the A832, just before turning up the road towards Ullapool, we stopped over to do a little hike. Or more a strolll, to the Falls of Meassach. It was a nice, but well prepared walk.

View from the suspension bridge

Natural wooden bench. All in one piece

In Ullapool we first went to the tourist information to find out if we could do a whale watching trip from here. It was posible, but the chance of seeing whales is not too big. But right after that they told us that this week they spotted about 40 dolphins one day and some orca’s the other say. Very uncommon, but so is the weather so who knows we’re lucky.

Tanguy immediately called the company and they have a place for us tomorrow. So we decided to stay at the local campsite. But first we did some shopping at Tesco, the first proper supermarket since a couple of days. We bought a lamb leg for the bbq and then went to the campsite. We found a nice spot at the end off the campsite along the pebble beach. When we were having a gin tonic some seals came by, and shortly after that we think we saw dolphins, but it could also been orca’s 😂.  Either way it was great. I prepared the leg of lamb on the bbq while Tanguy was looking for more seals.

View from the camp site

Riley for sale 

Preparing the lamb

Ready for cooking

Liane looking for seals

Two seals 40m away from our camper

More seals or....?

The lamb 80min later

We started diner outside but the midges drove us into Tos very quickly. So we finished our meal inside.
While we were enjoying the lamb the sun set, time for a picture.

Sunset

We ended our meal with coffee and whisky.

Cheers!