Northwest Highlands

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Smoo Caves in Durness

Clashnessie Beach

Loch Glencoul

The highway is single track for a long while, we got an early start after visiting Smoo Caves so the traffic was light. The landscape is gorgeous and became more mountainous as we headed south down the west coast. Then we entered the Assynt area which is just wonderful, rock and water.

One of Scotland`s famous poets, wrote this poem about the Assynt.

A Man in Assynt (extract) Norman MacCaig

Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out
these valleys, rasping the brown sandstone,
and left, on the hard rock below — the
ruffled foreland —
this frieze of mountains, filed
on the blue air — Stac Polly,
Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,
Canisp — a frieze and
a litany.

Who owns this landscape?
has owning anything to do with love?
For it and I have a love-affair, so nearly human
we even have quarrels. —
When I intrude too confidently
it rebuffs me with a wind like a hand
or puts in my way
a quaking bog or a loch
where no loch should be. Or I turn stonily
away, refusing to notice
the rouged rocks, the mascara
under a dripping ledge, even
the tossed, the stony limbs waiting.

I can't pretend
it gets sick for me in my absence,
though I get
sick for it. Yet I love it
with special gratitude, since
it sends me no letters, is never
jealous and, expecting nothing
from me, gets nothing but
cigarette packets and footprints.

Who owns this landscape? —
The millionaire who bought it or
the poacher staggering downhill in the early morning
with a deer on his back?

Who possesses this landscape? —
The man who bought it or
I who am possessed by it?

False questions, for
this landscape is
masterless
and intractable in any terms
that are human.
It is docile only to the weather
and its indefatigable lieutenants —
wind, water and frost.
The wind whets the high ridges
and stunts silver birches and alders.
Rain falling down meets
springs gushing up —
they gather and carry down to the Minch
tons of sour soil, making bald
the bony scalp of Cul Mor. And frost
thrusts his hand in cracks and, clenching his fist,
bursts open the sandstone plates,
the armour of Suilven:
he bleeds stones down chutes and screes,
smelling of gunpowder.

Or has it come to this,
that this dying landscape belongs
to the dead, the crofters and fighters
and fishermen whose larochs
sink into the bracken
by Loch Assynt and Loch Crocach? —
to men trampled under the hoofs of sheep
and driven by deer to
the ends of the earth — to men whose loyalty
was so great it accepted their own betrayal
by their own chiefs and whose descendants now
are kept in their place
by English businessmen and the indifference
of a remote and ignorant government.

Assynt

I decided some time ago we should take the single track road which makes a loop near the coast to Lochinver. I had read that the road was narrow, but omfg, it was insane! Our tiny car just fit and there were blind curves and blind summits everywhere and wicked turns both up and downhill. On top of all that we had to watch for oncoming traffic and get over into a passing place and keep a look out for sheep. The scenery was spectacular but the road just about gave me a heart attack and I wasn`t driving.

View From The Crazy Road Near Drumbeg

Then we drove to Stoer to take a small cliff walk to see the sea stack `The Old Man of Stoer.` The walk was only 6km return and we were totally alone, it started to get a bit drizzly and was raining by the time we got back but the walk was superb. We cut across the moor on the way back, the land is very wet and boggy as there has been a lot of rain lately.

Stoer Lighthouse

View From Cliff Walk Near Stoer

Old Man Of Stoer Sea Stack

Ardvreck Castle

The remainder of the drive to Lochinver was a lot better than the drive to Drumbeg and shorter. We stopped in Lochinver and had lunch in the pub and it was raining like mad. Then we continued down to Ullapool to get the ferry to the Isle Of Lewis, the ferry docks at Stornoway. We are on the ferry right now getting our blog pics ready and writing. The ferry left Ullapool at 6:15 so it is dark.

Ullapool Harbour

We are in our accommodation in Lewis, there has been a tonne of rain and it was raining hard. The owner put on a fire for us in the living room, she said it has been pouring non-stop since 6:00 this morning.