Highland Fling

Highland Fling.
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I decided rightly or wrongly to sail on the 03:30 ferry to Cairnryan. It was over £70 cheaper for two trips, so I though, that’s a lot of diesel, so went for it. But you know, there are some things more important than £70 worth of diesel, like a decent nights sleep.
We were as usual, excited at the prospect of another long trip, so although the sailing wasn’t for another four and half hours, we left home to make the forty minute drive down.
Fully intending to try to sleep for a couple of hours, we arrived at the port, but the sleep never arrived, for me!

Got off the ferry at six am, after a very calm crossing, maybe the wind had been in bed, we certainly hadn’t.
Drove up to Girvan, a mere twenty five miles away and parked up right beside the sea and slept in bed, for about three hours.

There’s not a lot in Girvan, it has to be said, so we headed north, closer to the highlands.

Deciding to take the slightly longer, and bumpier, why are Scottish roads so bad?, route we came upon Culzean Castle.

What a gem of a place! By far the best castle we’ve visited. We joined National Trust Scotland here, because it’s cheaper than it’s big brother, National Trust, but gives the same privileges, no brainer.

The castle offers extensive grounds with a deer park, swan pond, walled gardens, lots of stuff for kids, and of course the castle, in which the top floor was given to Dwight D Eisenhower as a thank you from the Scottish people for his war efforts.

The sun was shining brightly, the birds were chirping their wee heads off, and the occasional pheasant called from the woods surrounding the castle estate.
It would be very easy to spend six hours in this place, but time is memories, so we motored on.

Not having a plan, not even knowing where we wanted to go next, we decided to get up past loch Lomond.
Just fairly recently, the powers that be decided to clamp down on people overnighting in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs areas. This was brought on by the amount of littering and anti social behaviour and it seems the powers that be etc, decided to lay the blame at motorhomers doors. Utter Ballochs, as this group of citizens usually leave LESS litter behind them, than what there was on their arrival!

Anyway, this drive the A82 is twisting and narrow in places, especially when a lorry or bus is coming towards you. I’d say, from Luss, to Falloch Falls, another beautiful scene, is the worst. A distance of around forty miles, with Loch Lomond for a long way on one side, tapering into a drive through a huge glen.
There had been a motorhome behind us for a good part of the way, but we lost him when the road closed in a bit.

The A85 for me, is a prettier drive, one of those drives when you get to have plenty of wow, and Jeez, moments when you go round corners!

So, we finally reached Oban, we’d been driving for almost five hours, no hurry, and were both knackered. Our first destination didn’t feel right, even though it was right on the sea front, so we just moved on, to choice two. Much better, closer to the town, no amenities, but we didn’t need any.
Three drinks, a bowl of stew, brought from home, and BED.

Highland Fling.

Oban.

As mentioned in the last post, the drive up past Glasgow to here is outstanding, some of it you really have to keep your wits about you, but so worth it.
It’s only around 160 miles from Girvan, so very doable in 4 hours or so, but it’s not about the speed.
I’m thinking if your heart is set on the NC500 or even the NE250, you’d be best to skip Oban, lovely as it is, and spend more of the time further north.

Anyway, as a town, Oban has a lot going for it. Founded, long ago, it has a pub which opened in 1790, and a distillery followed 4 years later.
There are a few trawlers in the fairly large harbour, but the main business is tourism, with Callmac operating an inter island ferry service, a few small firms operating day cruises to spot wildlife etc. We’re going on one today.

The town is dominated by Mc Caigs tower, a coliseum like structure built by a banker, spelt correctly, from which wer’e told you can see the whole of the bay and beyond the Isle of Kerrera to Mull. We never ventured up that far, a bit steep, but we had a good old trawl through the town. Some very interesting shops selling local stuff like paintings and crafts, but the craft I went for was found in Wetherspoons, where for £1.99 each, we drank some craft beer pints.

On the pier beside the train station there is a stall selling shellfish, at a very reasonable price, these are sourced from the trawlers about thirty yards away! No green miles there then..

Our home for the two nights was at the carpark on Glencruitten Road, at the stadium. Very quiet and around 7 minutes walk into town, ideal.

The following day, we drove into town and found a long stay carpark, behind the railway station, where for £5 you get 24 hours parking, with no signs up! As we were going on a wee ferry trip over to Mull, we opted for this, £3 for up to four hours or £5 for 24, no brainer.

The dat trip to Mull is £7.40 return, but unless you’re going to get a really early ferry its not worth the bother, we stayed on the boat and came home, because it was a miserable old day. Nice trip all the same, sort of expected to see some sea life, but there was none out there, to be seen!

Coming back to Oban we stopped at the pier side shellfish stall, and got some oysters, Margaret said one of them didn’t work. When I asked her which one, she said “everyone!”. And a smoked salmon and a prawn sandwich. Packed to gills, pardon the pun, with lovely fresh fish, and the smoked salmon was the best ever.

We only did the two pubs here, Wetherspoons The Corryvreckan, and the Oban. The Oban Inn, dating from 1790 is full of character, but it sits right on the tourist track, so for me, it loses the charm. Even though I’m a tourist as well!!!

After we settled down, and the marine alcohol had diminished, we set off, Oban is good for a day and a half, next time I might get a really early ferry and go as foot passengers to Mull, just to see Tobermory.

Our next stop was at the top of Loch Linnhe, looking down towards Oban, so lets go.

Ah yes, solitude after a large town! The weather was squally, on the way up the 27 miles off pretty, but twisty roads. The road surface hasn’t improved, even the Polish roads are better!
I don’t know what we were expecting, maybe a large car park, but no. It was grass lay-bys for part of the length of this single track road. One side a field of sheep, and the other, the Loch. All around are munro’s, hills, which gives it a saucer like feel. There are two or three farms up past us, so absolutely minimal traffic. The beach is pebbly, and the water is baltic. But, the scenery is fabulous.
We’re just doing the one night here, not being hermits, but definitely worth a look if you’re passing.

Don’t know if we’ll get to Fort William today, probably better, just to get some groceries, and visit the Wetherspoons in the town.

Highland Fling 3.

We left Oban after those two days, it was pretty much enough, unless you’re a local.

Setting out after our boat trip, we thought we’d stop for the night somewhere between Oban and Fort William, still no hurry. But with only forty four miles between the two, that really wasn’t possible. Every carpark has signage banning us, with dire consequences for misbehaving!
Another pretty drive along the A828 and A82, with Loch Linnhe to the left and munro to the right, we called in for a coffee and had a look at Park4Night. There was a spot! putting the location into the repaired sat nav, it came to pass we were parked up on the grass verge of a single track load which led to two or three crofts. The scenery was stunning, even though the beach which was all of ten feet from our door was ver pebbly. A field of sheep for company and some ducks in the sea was our company, and the silence was, well, very.

Getting into Fort William in the afternoon of the following day, we found all the carparks to be equipped with those stupid signs, I can understand why because we see dozens of mohos every hour.

We parked up in Morrisons supermarket carpark and went in for some shopping, then we spotted a Lidl sort of next door. We’d been here before years ago, when the signs didn’t say no motorhomes between 21:00 and 08:00.
I decided to ask Lidl if we stay in their carpark, and got the nod. So although we had to vacate the council run carpark at nine, we just drove straight across the road to those awfully nice Lidl folk. Guess where we’ll be doing our shopping on this trip?
The Great Glen, is the name of Wetherspoons pub in the far end of the town, this is where it’s very possible to wait twenty minutes to have a drink delivered, so far the service in pubs has been mostly below par, is that normal or do we just pick the wrong bars. Anyhow, I digress.

Fort William is ok for one day, even though we were there on Saturday into Sunday a lot of the touristy things weren’t operating.

Driving up the A82 towards Inverness, with no clear plan, other than to go to the two places the very helpful girl in the tourist office told us about.

Spean Bridge is home to a monument to the Marines, this was their training ground from inception during WW11, and seems to be a spiritual home with a very touching memorial garden. Worth a stop, for a short walk and coffee.

We stopped for coffee in a large lay-by lookout point on the shores of Loch Lochy. Lucky enough to talk to a Belgian guy coming from the opposite direction, who gave us some advice about sights etc.

Later as we arrived in Fort Augustus, we parked up to see where the Caledonian canal met Loch Ness. It’s a monster of a loch, twice as deep as Saint Pauls in London is high! Well, that’s what the blurb said, Margaret wouldn’t go in to dive down for proof.
While we were here, six boats had to go from the loch into the canal, which means the road bridge has to swing open, and then the boats enter the system trough a series of locks. We were supposed to visit Neptunes Ladder but missed it for some reason, definitely another thing to do on our way back down.
Fort Augustus is packed with tourists from all over the world, but again sadly lacks facilities for us, three hours did us here, it’s all you need and more, so we headed on towards Inverness.

Mindful of our water situation it was time to find a toilet disposal point and fresh water.
Driving along we spotted a sign for public toilets so we called in, only to see a sign for disposal of chemical toilets strictly forbidden. We decided not to use it but in hindsight, we don’t use chemicals, except for the ones in recycled Gin and Tonic, so we could have. Nae bather, we found another one a few miles up the road that had no such signage, and also a drinking water tap.
We were sorted, sadly I never took the addresses of these two places, but they are both between Fort william and Inverness.

Arrived in the bustling town of Inverness, but didn’t stop as we’re saving it for the return leg, and carried on up the NC500.
Well sort off. We wanted to see the Black Isle, including the Black Isle brewery, for some craft organic beer. Forgetting it was Sunday, there was no room in that inn.

Our stop for the night was again, in Park4Night, Red Rock cycle trails. A very pleasant spot, not far off the main, but very quiet road to Cromarty.
Picnic tables, birdsong and the odd mountain biker was our lot for the evening, a car came in around 04:05 but turned away again, that’s the beauty of parking on gravel! Could have been the police, but it was no time before sleep overtook me.

Cromarty, is a pleasant village with a small harbour, but what makes it stand out is really two things. All the buildings in the centre date back to at least Victorian times, while a couple of hundred meters away, in the firth, stand about eight oil rigs and associated shipping. Very interesting and a couple of very good places to park up for the night.
There is a public toilet in the middle of the village down a quiet side road and well signed, but no water.

Our next town was Dingwall, this is a bit bigger than most of the towns or villages we’ve passed. Plenty of parking, and a large Tesco. We walked around the town and found a really expensive butcher, but the beef and lamb were the canine danglies.
This part of the trip has reminded us a lot of parts of Germany for some reason, Could be the rolling hills and wide rivers.
Oh, ladies, there are a lot of charity shops in this wee town!
And a Lidl.

Strathpeffer is a Victorian spa town, we didn’t rate it as worth a stop.

The next three towns, Evanton, Alness, and Tain, had nothing to merit more than a short walk to stretch the legs. But again, this is just our personal opinion.

After another long bridge over the Dornoch Firth we came to a nice wee town, Dornoch. Just a mile or so out and on Park4Night, is a lay-by. This small single track road drives up along the Moray Firth, and from this lay-by you can watch a seal colony sunbathing or rather we did, as the weather has been great so far.

Motoring on after coffee and a few seal pics, we passed through Golspie, and Brora. Dunrobin Castle is on this part of the trip and when we tried to visit the carpark was too full to let us park easily so we cleared off.
It has to be said, the family that own the castle once had 1.5 million acres of land! And all I wanted was a parking spot!!

Never mind, our date night was to be Helmsdale, a pretty port built around the Herring industry in 1814.

We asked the harbourmaster, another fine chap, if we could have some water, no problem, he’s happy to give water.

The owner of The Bannockburn Inn, where we had a fabulous dinner, was telling us, before the popularity of the NW500, his was a £120k pa pub and then almost overnight it went up to £250K, if we had people like this, actually telling their councils the benefits, it would do no end of good.


Highland Fling 7.

Without doubt, the scenery is getting better, the roads are more winding, and if I had a cruising motorbike I’d be on this road like a, well motorbike.

We left Scrabster, and just as a wee note, if I was doing this again I’d drive straight to Helmsdale and start there. It’s only 314 miles you could knock it out in a couple of days. Up the road to John ‘O Groats, and dunes head, the most northerly part of mainland GB.
Past the gorgeous beach at Bettyhill, and on to Durness. Not much in either place, but it suits the location, either on an azure sea, or in the wilds of heather strewn moorland.

On our way down a single track road, of which there are plenty, we came across a VW type van, that had tried to do a three point turn, but managed to get both back wheels stuck on the wrong side of a foot high ditch. Before you knew it there were six motorhomes blocking this track, and we managed to get the chap out no bother. In a lot of places there is no phone signal and very often no data so it’s best to bare that in mind.

We found our next stop at Linlochervie, and for £15 pn you got ehu, black and grey disposal, and of course fresh water. This sits on a disused pier with lovely views and silence.
The village attached to the per was in the eighties, the hub of the northern fishing industry, still is to a far lesser extent. A place that would remind you a bit of Russia. Forlorn and forgotten.
No wind last night, so a great night was had by all.

Called in for diesel here and for £1.40 per litre, you can have as much as you like.

So now, we’re definitely on the western side, and the scenery and roads are even better.

The drive from Unapool via Drumbeg to Lochinver was one of the most challenging I’ve ever done. Margaret hardly said a word during the two hour, thirty mile drive. First time I’ve been down a 25% hill and some of the upward hills needed first gear. In places the road was barely wider than Helga, and there were plenty of passing places. It was like driving on a giant egg box, with some dodgy drops on either side.
I have kept some of the sat nav video for your enjoyment.

We eventually got onto a main two lane road and thought it was a motorway!! Stopping for coffee for me and valium for Margaret at the bridge of Kylesku, we had a stag come over for a nosy but he cleared off when we told him we’d no carrots. Well, we had a tin but he declined.
Our next stop was Ullapool, another loch side town, but not moho friendly so we moved on.

We were going to park up at Knockan Crag, there is an info point and toilets here, as well as a decent car park. The wind was getting up again and because the place is about 100 feet up a track overlooking a loch onto the mountains on the other side, it might have been another rock and roll night so we cleared off, to Braemore.

Last night it went to down into minus figures on the thermometer, and this morning we woke to dazzling blue skies and sunshine. Hopefully today will be the day we see our first eagles.