South to Lochinver

We decided to take a short side trip this morning to a small town called Tarbet. The only thing in Tarbet is a passenger ferry to an island called Handa, which is a nature preserve. We found out the ferry doesn't run on Sundays, but I still thought it would be cool to check out Tarbet. Who knows, we may be able to see Handa Island from the shore. Well, we couldn't, and there really isn't anything else in Tarbet. However, the drive to Tarbet was amazing, so beautiful, but probably the absolute worst roads we have been on ever. Thank goodness Randy is such a good sport. It was only a few miles out of our way, but because of the state of the road, it took much longer than we thought. I had used Google maps to get us there, but I thought I would use the campervans nav system to get us to our next destination. When I put in where I wanted to go, I received an error message. It seems the system was programmed to keep us off roads that were too small for a vehicle this size. We are 24 feet long and 9 feet wide. The road we took to Tarbet was one we shouldn't have been on. I didn't share that little bit of information with Randy until after we made it back to the main road. I think when we are going to go off road again, I will use the campers' nav system just in case. We were on a two lane road for a while and at times almost hit the 60 mile an hour speed limit. It felt like we were flying, but very soon, we were back on a single track road, barely making 40 miles an hour. We found another stunning beach today. I'm sad to say that I can't even remember where it was, but it was gorgeous. The sand was three different colours, white, pink, and green by the warers edge. While I was wandering around, a family came with a pony. It was the funniest thing they were running it up and down by the surf, and then the pony decided to roll in the sand. I dont think that was in their plan. We stopped for the day at Lochinver, a small sea side town. We parked by the harbour across from a pub. It was not the quietest spot, but it was free, and we could walk across the street for a pint. We had a late lunch early dinner at Peets Restaurant, which had great reviews. We actually wanted to try the pies at Lochiner Larder, but they were closed on Sundays. We've read reviews and been told by a few people that they have the best pies in the world. They open at 10 Monday morning, so that's another good reason to spend the night here in Lochinver. Also, I can actually pronounce the name of this town correctly so I'm not leaving. We walked along the waterfront and met two elderly ladies who were out walking their dogs. We had such a nice conversation with them. They couldn't quite figure out why we would come all the way to Scotland when we had such a big country of our own. We went to the pub and watched Scotland beat Tonga in World Cup Rugby. We met a few really nice fellow tourists who were traveling with their dogs, so we had our puppy fix, too. While we were there we watched a big fishing boat come in to the harbour. There were a couple of large trucks waiting for their catch, so we thought it may be a noisy night ahead. We found out the boats that come in are usually French or Spanish. There aren't any local boats any longer. The boats come in, drop off their catch, and head right back out again. After the rugby match, we headed back to the camper, and Randy beat me at a few card games. After we went to bed, it wasn't the loading of trucks that woke us up it was the wind again. It howled all night and shook the camper enough to wake us both up on a regular basis. The weather reports have a wind warning in the whole area for Wednesday and Thursday. I can't imagine how much worse it could get, but we may be in for an eventful few days.Read more