Day 50: Feeling cross and Applecross

The cabin is a disappointment. Lots of attention to the wrong sort of detail. Nick-knacks of fat bathing belles about the place and dirty sinks, cracked window panes and cobwebs. Definitely not up to the usual standards. To add insult to injury, there is a notice on the gate as you come in offering cabin accommodation for just £20 per person. I have had to pay three times that price per night by the time Airbnb have added their mark-up. I am not a happy bunny and I have said so in my review. 

Air bnb can be tricky when it comes to currency as well. The Swiss couple I met at Paul’s house were similarly disenchanted when they realised that the company played tricks with currencies: Swiss francs converted to Euros and then pounds and charged every step of the way. Never mind.

Only one more night and tomorrow I will go over to Skye to stay with Harish and his wife Clemencia for a couple of days. I met Harish as a client, and did a swap with him for an Enneagram analysis. At the time they were living in St. Leonards on the Sussex Coast but just in time for me, they went to live on Skye. Quite a radical step and I am looking forward to finding out how it has been thus far.

Today, no telephone signal and no wifi at all so I read a novel until I was summoned to the cabin door by someone knocking. Thinking it might be my host I opened the door to find I had a guest.

She made me think about having a very late breakfast and setting off for Applecross. Had I known what the journey would have been like, I may have had a duvet day instead.

What did I know about it?

Several people had recommended that I go.

It has a pub that has won best restaurant food in Scotland year on year and yet was still affordable. It has a heritage centre and an old abbey.

Oh yes and you get to it on the highest road in Great Britain.

Now I consider myself a brave person. Marianne my sister and I walked along a foot wide path 600 foot up a 1200 foot sheer cliff in South Africa with our friend Jenny because she thought we could manage it. Manage it we did but privately Marianne and I thought it was the most dangerous thing we had ever attempted (now you know Jen!).

This was similar. It was raining. I was not driving my own car but a borrowed one with a difficult to find second gear and a dodgy handbrake. It all started off alright.

Until I came across this warning sign.

Sadly folks I chickened and went the long way round. The VERY long way round. It took two and a half hours to get there. I did go through a couple of nice little towns, Lochcarron being one. It had a couple of shops, a string of pretty white houses with roses rambling round the doorways, a lot of small sail boats on the water and a wonderful golf course on the edge of the loch.

Not much else. Sheep crossed the road in front of me with no warning, and twice I met Boris’s cousins also untethered and on the road.

It was steep enough and mostly single track. I hoped the famous Applecross was worth the two and a half hours it took to get there. I was overtaken by six Austrian Porsche heading in the same direction. Another foreign car posse.

Eventually I saw Applecross bay...

And then the village itself. It was very small. It had one shop, one petrol pump and a walled garden somewhere but I never found it.

I did find the Applecross pub however.

And being just one person, they found me a tiny table and I had a good fish pie with haddock and hot smoked salmon.

The Porsche drivers had to wait a bit longer. Apparently this is a trip they do twice a year every year. Why? No idea.

It had taken me so long to get there,  I thought that I would risk taking the short way back over the mountains on the highest road in the UK. One the map they refer to it as The Cattle Pass.

They are joking!! Any cattle with half a brain would definitely pass. It was really scary; hair pin bends and big dipper single track roads with blind summits which as you crested them gave you no hint where the road had gone. It had gone down about 40 foot. Would the hand brake hold? Could I find the second gear? 

 I wished I had someone else in the car for the first time on this trip. If Chris Evans does it for Top Gear someone tell him to drive himself. Like him, I am not the best of travellers if someone else is driving. That road was seriously car sick making never mind basic fear.

The sense of achievement 10 miles on when I came down to ground level was enormous. Now I understand how the mad cyclists felt doing the North Coast 500 from Thurso to Durness. 

However, hire car and I managed it together. Result.

Got back to find the chicken waiting for me with her mate. 

As I got out of the car they both strutted up to the radiator grill and started pecking at the insects splattered there. They’ve obviously done this before.

Day 49: Disaster day - good and bad news in equal measure

What a blooming nightmare!!

Good news: I am not imagining a problem with Gloria

Bad news: Paul took her down the hill and said that the clutch is slipping. Today is Saturday. The only garage in Ullapool is closed until Monday.

Good news: Paul says if I treat her very gently and stay in low gear and go slowly, we will get to Plockton, my next place, perfectly well.

Bad news: These are the most demanding roads in the UK. There are mountains. Gloria is struggling to get out of second gear and doesn’t want to go up mountains any more.

Good news: Much of this journey is on the level. Not nearly so many mountains as there heave been over the last five days. Saw a garage and it was open Yay!!!!

Bad news: Not a garage at all...somewhere to keep haulage truck.s

Good news: Kindly Kenny the owner tied to ring a couple of garages he knew but they were all closed. He gave me his phone number and said she should make it to Plockton but in case she didn’t he would came and get me with his tractor if I broke down. He also tested Gloria and like Paul said he thought she’d get to Plockton but to take it very gently on the hills. (He means mountains just not the Munro sort of mountains!)

Bad news: “By the way Plockton doesn’t have a garage. You’d best drive on to Kyle of Lochalsh."

Good news: We limped into Kyle - just

Bad news: It's Saturday. The garage was shut. I am supposed to be back in Plockton staying on a farm that is 9 miles outside the town in the middle of nowhere – and no way to get there. I went to the police since my car was sitting defiantly in their drive opposite the garage.

Good news: Kyle of Lochalsh has the single best police force in two men anywhere in Great Britain! Big round of applause please.

First they found me a garage that was only open because staff were about to go on another rescue mission. John the mechanic let me have a car of his for £10 a day so I can still go to Skye and the farm at Plockton and when I get back on Wednesday morning - Gloria will be sorted. And as she's a Ford not a BMW or a MERC so it will be almost affordable.

What a stressful day. I haven’t a clue about scenery or wonders to behold. Spent 80 miles

concentrating on getting my beloved little car safely to a garage. And we have. And we did.

This is my replacement car. I stalled it four times just trying to get it out of the garage onto the main road. But doubtless we will soon get used to one another.

You can see the island of Skye from the Kyle of Lochalsh. It is so close! I had imagined in the ‘Over The Sea to Skye’ scenario that we were talking about a distance like from England to France but far from it. There’s a rather elegant road bridge and that is how I will get there on Monday (now I have a replacement car!)

Happily I had managed to get the car to move uphill without embarrassing myself, the farm was just 9 miles away. It turns out not to be the usual sort of farm.

Graig Highland Farm is a sort of conservation farm with the usual chickens and Bonnie the goat and the less common lama. Judging by the notices pinned to the fence, families are welcome to bring their children to see the various animals and feed them. I have seen neither any of the animal, any families with or without children nor my host. 

My cabin is wooden and self contained with a bath (hurray) and main room with kitchen sitting area and dining area and one bedroom. The views are great. Not too sure about the cabin but I intend to have a long soak in the bath with a glass of something red  and then an even longer sleep. Night all.

Day 47: On Mountains and Midges

I’m retracing my path of yesterday towards Lochinver, along the single track roads up in the mountains. The Munroe mountains are said to be the highest in Scotland. Today with the lowering clouds you can’t see the peaks.

And although the weather is wet it’s still beautiful here.

At Scourie I met a new friend. 

I call him Boris and his mate Trump. Don’t know why – it just came to me. 

Most of this area is a designated National Geo Park – an area of considerable scientific and geological interest and you only have to look at the rock formations along the way to get an idea why. 

 

The National body responsible for looking after the area are brilliant at creating parking spaces all along the route where you can stop, look at the landscape and read the information boards telling you about the glaciers and the formation of the country. With no towns, no shops and little visible agriculture, this part of Scotland is all about the outdoors: biking, cycling, walking, (sometimes both)

-nature watching and camping.

This camper was under an enormous road bridge over the river Assynt. 

On the subject of camping, the Dutch caravan club was also on annual manoeuvres this morning. I counted a convey of 32 cars pulling caravans and the odd Camper van thrown in for variety, heading towards Lochinver. I understand they come over every year. The mountains must be a major draw to the Dutch. They have barely anything even remotely resembling a hill let alone mountains of such majesty as these. 

I passed by several very small hamlets and the very photogenic ruined Ardvreck castle. 

All of a sudden as I crested a hill, there was Ullapool laid out straight in front of me looking as if it was floating on Loch Broom. 

Ullapool is really nice and very white, virtually everywhere is painted white including the Indian take away. 

The owner of a lovely Gallery told me it was because in the past all the houses were painted with lime wash to preserve them from the salt. Now the old part of the town is a conservation area so the white painting is set in stone so to speak. 

There is a large modern Ferry terminal on the harbour because the ferry sails to the isle of Lewis. as well as smaller boats taking day trippers round the Summer Isles. 

Sounds so lovely but here is the reality of Scottish summer today. 

I was expecting it to be a bigger town but it is small with lots of galleries and gift shops and of course the inevitable fish and chips.

Very nice and freshly caught, but expensive. 

Like everywhere else on the coast of Britain there is a long history of fishing here.  In the 1970’s Ullapool became the base for many eastern European factory ships known as the Klondykers, who processed the mackerel that small bought caught and transported them back to their home bases. 

 

They are no longer part of Ullapool’s economy, but I saw Spanish fishing vessels in the harbour loading crates and crates of their catch directly into Spanish refrigerated lorries ready to return to Spain. Why? The cold water. Seafood is very popular in Europe and these waters produce the best lobster, crab and langoustines anywhere and are in very high demand. I don’t know quite how that works – European fishermen fishing off these waters and sending the catch out of the country -  but I suppose since no-one is rioting, it must work somehow.

The other large European presence in town today were the French 2 CV club. Apparently they often come to Scotland. 

The town was full of tourists today and some of the cafes were struggling to serve people. This is what the woman in Lochinver was implying when she said these towns don’t really have the infrastructure to deal with sudden influxes of visitors. Particularly when they are so irregular that they can’t be foreseen. There is almost no-one in the winter.

This is Polly Hoad. Polly doesn’t do white. She does unlimited colour. 

Her little shop is every hue imaginable. 

Polly has had a very interesting life so far. She was a light house keepers wife bringing up her family in very remote places. She studied art and textiles as a young woman, hence her love of colour. And every winter she shuts her home and her shop and travels the world looking for lovely things to bring back. She has recently commissioned a range of leather handbags which she designed. 

She had an accident a while ago and that left her with an element of brain damage, a useless hand and partial sight loss but that does not deter her from her travelling alone to places like India or Peru for her crafting. 

Polly weaves. 

This year as soon as her feet touched down at Inverness she made the decision to leave Scotland for Portugal where she plans to open a weaving studio teaching just four students at a time – in the warm sun. 

So her house in Ullapool and her business is up for sale and she is willing to act as mentor and buyer for the new owners if they want her to, for a period of two years from the sale. Sounds like a plan. 

If anyone out there is interested get in touch with her on: 01854 612439 or polly@ucolour.co.uk

When Scots on the East Coast heard I was continuing my travels by going along the top and down the west they told me that the West might have the beauty but it also had the midges. I see what they mean. In the damp they are out in force, clouds of tiny biting flies, so small you can hardly see them, nibbling away at any exposed part. The locals use a spray called Smidge. Boots don’t sell it. Tesco does. I will get some tomorrow first thing.