Loch Roe

When I woke and looked out of the window I saw the leisure centre, but if I looked to the right I saw the lorry loading bays for the fish and there were loads of them - loading bays, not fish. The mind boggles as to how many fish must be shipped from here but today, and last night, it was deserted. What was on show however, was a blue sky which looked promising for the day ahead. Yippee.

I was heading for Achmelvich beach which is only about five miles away and the route down to it is quite narrow and the car park at the end quite small, but there were two spaces left when I arrived so I parked up and went to purchase my ticket, only to be oh so pleasantly surprised. It was a pretty standard car park ticket machine but the pleasantness was it was only £1 for two hours and as if that isn't enough, the notice says you are invited to pay for your parking. INVITED! Wow, how refreshing and so I was more than pleased to pop my £1 into the slot and proudly display my ticket on the dashboard. I then grabbed a few things from the van and walked the short distance to the beach which although I knew it would be good, I didn't realise quite how good this place is.

I decided not to go down onto the beach itself at first but followed the path upwards to a grassy area where you overlook it and my goodness what a scene opened before my eyes. Just look at the main photo of this footprint to be totally blown away by this location. I took photo 3 because it so much reminded me of Greece and here I was with the sun beating down, blue skies and a perfect scene. I decided the world could wait and stayed here for almost three hours before moving on, simply chilling out in the summer sunshine. To say it was relaxing is a huge understatement and I challenge you to say, if you didn't know, that photo 4 was taken in the UK. The video confirms that I think.

One thing I did notice was the number of jellyfish floating around, just like in Ullapool and again there were three or four varieties. The most common was a simple round one with four purple rings and you can what I mean in the last photo and in the video included here.

Yes, I know it was sunny with blue skies but even so, I'm afraid the beaches I visited on the Isle of Lewis just didn't match up to this.Read more