Hebridean Rendezvous

My journey continues north and after a late night last night and a bit of a lie in, I decided to skip breakfast then find a café for brunch. I had a café stop in mind too, which was recommended to me my by a friend who did the NC500 last year: The Rock Stop Café and Exhibition Centre, just south of the Kylesku bridge. It wasn't all that far from my overnight stop and in no time I found it, parked the van and headed for the entrance only to be greeted with what you see in photo 2: closed! Photo 1, by the way, is the view across the loch from the picnic tables there, but what is going one here? I still cannot really understand why so many places are closed, so I scurried away and headed for the village of Kylesku to see if I could find something there and fortunately I did. I was able to get a snack and coffee and from the window where I was sitting I grabbed photo 3 as a fishing boat headed up the loch.

Quite often along this route there are laybys of various sizes with the larger ones having information boards. These might tell you of the geology, as I have already mentioned, or they explain some aspect of history or a historical event, so it was on a whim that I pulled into the one I was passing at the top of the hill having driven over Kylesku bridge. Photo 4 is the view from there and the information board described hot the rocks of this while region, the Assynt, are some of the oldest on our planet, dating back at least 3000 million years. That is a very long time indeed and demonstrates how clever and intelligent we humans are such that we take only a couple of hundred years or so to virtually ruin all that effort. Not all that clever or intelligent are we.

Anyway, whist taking photo 4 I could see two women cycling up that endless hill and when they also stopped in the layby we chatted for a while. Their mission was to cycle the NC500 which is an impressive aim. They were supported by the younger person's husband who drove the route carrying supplies, accessories and clothes etc and generally looking after the admin side of things. They seemed worn out and yet they still had twenty miles to go to their overnight stop. That was certainly impressive determination.

Photo 5 is an example of one of the many small lochs I saw today, all shining a lovely blue in the fine weather, which made for a relaxing and pleasant drive towards Scourie, which unfortunately sounds like a sexually transmitted disease. Consider this: "Okk the noo, I had a wee blast oot on the toon last nicht and met this pretty lassie, but ah have t-eh admit I got me a bad case of scourie." Alright, I admit that's a bit unfair but I'm absolutely sure I overheard someone ask for a scourie pad whilst doing the washing up ... or maybe I heard wrong.

My first experience of the scourie - oops, I'll start again. When I first arrived at Scourie I decided to ask the locals if there were any girls available for a night on the town. Oh no I've messed up again, so let me start a new paragraph.

Upon arriving at Scourie the first thing you see is a sign to the beach so I decided to go and take a look and headed to explore a second beach area, rather than the obvious one with a couple of families doing what families do on beaches. To get to it you have to walk around the outside of the graveyard full of scourie infected bodies, past the bloke with the dodgy dog dragging its hind legs along like you might pull a plough (clearly suffering from canine scourie) then around the corner to a small beach of pebbles and rocks. It is then I understood why those families, all two of them, were on the first beach blessed with almost white sand, only slightly tarnished by the affects of scourie. However, after scrambling over the rocks I discovered something that made the effort worthwhile.

What I found you can see in the last two footprint photos - a reasonably sized and relatively deep rockpool containing crabs (no comment), small fish and a whole array of plant life. To me it looked as though every aspect of coastal sea life was represented here and the water was crystal clear too.

The tide was rising rapidly and I decide to spend half-an-hour relaxing and watching as each wave made its way closer and closer to the pool, it became a guessing game as to which wave would actually be the first to actually make it into the pool. Yes, I realise that sounds about as boring as it gets but I was mesmerised and for your delight, the video in this footprint lets you experience a little of that. Yawn ... I think the Scottish air is getting to me or failing that, perhaps a mild case of the scourie.

As I strolled back to the car, feeling a bit itchy, I noticed that on the other side of the beach was a campsite which would provide an opportunity for a shower and to sort out the van for water etc. It was only £13 all -in so that is where I stopped for the night. Food came from the fish & chip van just up the road.

With a late start today I've not done a huge amount but tomorrow I should make it to Durness, given it isn't all that far, where another white sand beach awaits, so they say.Read more