Sunday morning domesticity …
After a slow, about 7am, start to the day … I got things underway. A late shop yesterday at the local co-op reinforced the cost of living in the UK. The tiny Citroen DS3 gulped an astonishing GBP43, about the same as the average top-up on my 4WD at home. The supermarket followed with GBP65!
OK I know I am shopping from scratch rather than just getting the odd things I would need at home but the one shopping bag which contains it all is not heavy!
Bacon, egg and mushrooms for breakfast and then several loads of washing. Now I am ready for another week. I decide to wander down to the seafront at Broadford the nearest town. As I leave the house I suddenly realise just how comfortable it is … I have been walking around in a T-shirt inside but when I go out at 10:30am there is a centimetre of ice all over the car and the thermometer reads 2 deg C. In fact the patterns are interesting so I spend an extra few minutes taking a few photographs.
Then off to Broadford … where the harbour is a small derelict looking place with a few neglected boats scattered around.
So I content myself with images of a few details which catch my eye.
Including a little piece of “tide-wrack” for Rosemary who is collecting such things …
All the shops, cafes and galleries are close either because it’s Sunday, not tourist season yet or have gone out of business … I’m not sure which is in the majority … and it’s still a little while to lunch so I head off to repeat last Tuesdays visit to Elgol to see if it has improved with the passing of time …
The day is turning out a perfect spring day, still, bright and sunny and the 2 deg C of earlier almost forgotten.
Along the way there are a few lochs to be circumnavigated and at the edge of one is some sort of Heron putting on an exhibition …
It’s too far away to get very clear images but I make them none the less.
The occasional cottage is an interesting foreground to the ever present Cuillans … whether they are the “Red” or the “Black” I have no idea at this stage as I left my map behind so I opt to make them black anyway!
Elgol is unsurprisingly very much like it was a week ago including everything being shut because of the “season” not having started yet!
I’m pretty sure that the view is the back of the “Red” Cuillans but there is no colour on it that I can detect so I opt to leave it black and white too …
By now it is past lunchtime so I decide to head back for “Otterburn Cottage” in Lower Breakish …
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At around 5pm I decide to have a look around the local vicinity for anything interesting so I just turn left instead of right as I leave the driveway and make my way out to the end of the headland where there is another old graveyard … with the inevitable tree right in the middle !
This one has an enclosing stone wall all along the sea edge which is in amazingly good repair considering the rest of the place.
The sun is heading toward the horizon and there is only so much I can do in a graveyard …
I decide to head out a little further as ther is still a bit of light and take a turn off to Kylerhea where there is a ferry to the mainland and an otter haven. I still haven’t adjusted to the fact that nothing is quite what it is advertised to be in this Island of Skye …
The signpost reads 7 miles but it is over the “mountain” and is even narrower than all the other roads I have been on … and on Skye that is something … there is a slight widening of the roads about every ¼ mile and a sign which says “passing place”. If it wasn’t for the politeness of every driver, cars would have to have three forward and three reverse gears. But everyone seems more than eager to stop and pull over at the sight of any other car and everyone waves acknowledgement as they go by.
Of course there is no sign of a ferry when I arrive about 6 pm and I don’t really want to go to the mainland but it is either that or retrace my path over the mountain. There seems to be a plethora of roads going to a town somewhere in a corner of Skye and there is no other way out but too go back the way you came. A few “No Through Road” signs would be very handy …
The only compensation is the sun giving a bit of colour to the sky as it sets behind some other mountain range.
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