An examined life?: Scotland Trip

Monday, 17 August 2009

Scotland Trip - Day two

A somewhat uncomfortable night. Perhaps 8 hours sleep, but interrupted on several occasions. Heavy rain throughout the night. Worse still, the small opening in the window to let in some fresh air let in a huge number of midges, as well as allowing the soaking of the front seat. So I have a number of bites. Too early to say how many - presumably these will develop over the next couple of days.

Driving to Mallaig, the weather clears a little - enough to take a few photos. I am in plenty of time for the ferry to Armadale on Skye. It would have been nice to have Linda with me for this trip. Even more so in Armadale where there is a 3 hour boat trip around the nearby islands with the aim of whale watching. I could have really done with a nice breakfast but nowhere is open before the boat leaves at 10:00. A disabled guy is part of our group and is willingly lowered down a very step flight of steps to the boat. I'm not sure I would have done this. He had a huge amount of very expensive photo equipment with him - perhaps he often does this sort of thing.

We travelled down to a nearby island where a number of seals where basking. Oddly enough, they seems quite intrigued by the boat and watched us throughout our time there. Then the boat speeded up quite considerably and sped along the coast over the tops of the waves. Perhaps 30 knots max speed? Very exciting I thought. Next stop is the view a large collection of shags (small cormorants) on various rocks. Once more I am left thinking that Linda would have really enjoyed this. Next birds on our itinerary are kittywakes, also settled on their own rocks. The sea is fairly rough here and the boat rises and falls perhaps 6 feet in the swell - perhaps Linda wouldn't have liked this so much. It also made photography quite hard.

Out into open water to attempt to see some whales. The boat trips actually only see whales about one in three times. We were unlucky but we did see a couple of basking sharks. Gavin Maxwell, of Ring of Bright Water fame, had come to the area around Skye to set up a basking shark fishery I seem to remember. I have a book somewhere by his partner, Ted Geddes. I'm pretty sure that basking sharks are one of those species about which little is known. They vanish at various times of the year and it is not clear where they go.

So we bob about at various locations without seeing any whales. But there are a large number of gannets diving in the sea and I spend at least an hour on the boat trying, without success, to get a picture of one diving.

After the trip finishes around 1:00, I drive up to the first town on Skye, Broadford, for some lunch at a tiny cafe. Then on to Portree. Great scenery throughout - several stops for picture taking including the hotel area at Sligachan from which I plan to walk into the Cuillen in a couple of days time for my one night of planned wild camping (somewhere around Loch Curilisk is my plan). On to Uig in the north-west of Skye, a randomly chosen destination mainly known for the ferry to Tarbet on Harris. When planning the two week Scotland trip earlier in the year, I had intended that we would use this crossing, but this week I don't have enough time. Spent a couple of hours crashed out in a lay-by reading Kitty Ferguson's Tycho and Kepler. Even have a brief time online, and chat to Linda on MSN.

Early evening I drove across towards the Quinaing taking lots of photos, particularly of the sunset viewed from Duntulm Castle. A quick chat to Emma in London and an early night pondering on tomorrow's plans