WEST COAST VI

Back of Keppoch, Mallaig, Fort William, Kyle of Lochalsh, Balmacara

Tuesday 070904: My flippin' birthday!

Jo gave me:

A good pair of jeans.........., Which two months later she decided were too short. Six months later they're a good fit! And why, (oh, why) the buttoned fly? I thought you liked buttoned flies, she said! This will sound ungrateful of me, I know, but I couldn't help quietly expressing my surprise that for all our time together Jo might have thought that I preferred safety to ease of access;
An Oxfam mouse-mat made from recycled tyres, "On one journey to deliver food in Kenya the terrain was so rough that an Oxfam truck used eight spare tyres" and
A pen-like torch which can be clipped onto a book to avoid a reader disturbing with any other lights a partner who might be trying to sleep (in, for example, a campervan).

We hung my cards from the "upstairs" curtain wires while I grappled with the thought that 48 seems so very much older than 47. And it still does.

Skye and the author on birthday no. 48. As they increasingly do, this birthday came as a bit of a shock to him.

We drove back up to Mallaig and I walked into the booking office. The staff looked at me askance, for which reason I looked at them askance too, then said that we were wanting to cross to Armadale.

They told me there were "technical difficulties" with the ferry and that there'd be no sailings until 4pm or later, and that anyway those sailings were fully booked.

Well, bugger! I wondered, but didn't ask, why they'd taken away the CLOSED sign, which only then did I remember seeing on the previous day.

Along with undoubtedly thousands of other dumb tourists over the years, I had once made the mistake of taking a return crossing from Mallaig to Armadale when really I'd intended to travel north again from Skye and had simply damn well forgotten the plain fact that up the coast from Mallaig to Kyle of Lochalsh there is no damned road at all. Damn, damn, damn!

Oddly enough, but probably because on this day it was somebody else's fault, I didn't feel too bad about having to drive an extra 120 miles to Kyle of Lochalsh.

Anyway, it's a good route. And the weather was scorching. Now, when I say scorching........,

<<<< Skye, Jo and her meerkat.

Scorching is near enough what I mean. The sun through the van's window stung my short-sleeved arms as we drove back along the previous day's road to Lochailort, then on past Glenfinnan with me recalling that steam train trip with my ancient dad, and along Loch Eil and into Fort William.

We parked at a large supermarket and coffeed and caked in Nevisport. Jo remembered us doing all this on our earlier visit. It is strange how she remembers the shopping. We "did" the high street shops, (What, all of them? Yes, it was just starting to feel like that), and walked back along the lochside road where, looking down onto the rocks I saw enough driftwood to keep several woodstoves going all winter.

At the Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge we parked and scoffed salad, the type which at supermarkets one greedily forces into a plastic tub. One doesn't? Oh, well, I do.

At Invergarry we left the Great Glen and drove northwest past those ugly hydro-electric reservoirs.

As we started the descent to Glen Shiel I felt sure we'd see red deer, but we didn't, other than a dead one Jo spotted at the roadside. In hot weather Scotland's red deer, (which, given a choice would very much prefer to inhabit indigenous broadleaved woodland), go much higher into the mountains to catch some breeze and to escape the clegs.

And it was hot, (or have I already mentioned that?). But by then it was Jo's turn to get sting-y arm.

Perhaps a little blasé we rolled past Eilean Donan castle, of which my parents once had a mural photograph pasted onto the dining room wall, (that now would be very passé), and into Kyle (of Lochalsh) where I took a wrong turn, nearly drove onto the Skye Bridge, but shot into the last available side road only to find that it led to a Co-op supermarket. So we went in and bought some wine.

Then we turned back a short way to our campsite, (with its ultra-pristine toilets), at Balmacara, again a site at which we had stopped on our first trip together to the Highlands.

But in those days we had a tent. And at four feet high it was too tall to be allowed onto the campsite.

Have you ever heard such nonsense? We stayed anyway.

Back when my sister was at university, (the first time), at St Andrews she told me about Wee Marys. Wee Marys can be found in various locations, mainly in Scotland of course, and I do suspect that they tend to congregate in universities. They are very likely to be dressed exactly as their mothers, to study their clenched little arses off and to have only a very limited understanding of the term "social life".

Since our first visit Jo and I have privately referred to the Balmacara site's owner as Wee Alistair, (being the male equivalent of a Wee Mary). He was still as fussy as a duster, but on this occasion to his small credit he did draw me a neat and quite detailed map of how to find the shop in Inverness from which he'd bought his inexpensive clogs.

We spent a lazy evening on the site. It was like being on holiday really. Occasionally I'd pop across onto the extending shore to try to photograph the sun going down behind the Skye Bridge four miles away. On my final sunset-seeking trip I found a dead shearwater. Jo was less than fascinated to hear of my discovery.

In the end the sun sank so far north of where I'd expected it to, that I gave up.

A young chap and his unhappy girlfriend pulled onto the site in a hot hatch. He soon realised he'd forgotten to pack tent pegs and I was about to offer him an overnight loan of the pegs from our awning, (other than for forward ballast in high winds, we didn't once use it), when Wee A came to the rescue with a handful of pegs which doubtless over the years he'd gleaned from the site. Perceptively I don't doubt, Wee A also offered the oik a full refund of the site fee should oik need to find alternative accommodation.

Oik then turned on his car radio and played bad music very loudly.

Wee A swooped again!

The volume was reduced from an infuriating level to an annoying one. It cheered me greatly however, to watch the oik doing extended variations on the midge dance.

And I was glad I hadn't lent him our pegs.

Only as it went properly dark did he turn off his radio.

Balmacara, Elgol, (Skye), Kyle Rhea, (Skye), Mam Ratagan, Plockton, Bealach Na Ba, Applecross

Wednesday 080904: Although there'd been a touch of overnight frost, you won't be surprised, will you, to read that the oik, on his way to and from the washroom, walked across the campsite dressed only in his designer jeans and trainers.

Soon our buzzin' van was climbing, it's quite steep, over the Skye Bridge, (from which on 311204 the toll will be removed!). We drove straight along to Broadford then turned south up over the watershed towards Elgol. After any previous trips to Skye my dad has always asked whether or not I'd been to Elgol, but distracted by better known locations, I never had.

It was so early, by our standards, that some of the approaching motorists were obviously still on their way to work. Alongside us for a while ran a disused 3' gauge railway built to transport Skye marble to the pier at Broadford. At the most optimistic reckoning the line operated only from 1907 to 1913.

As we slowly rounded the convex curve of the valley the views broadened out. We drove down to the side of Loch Slapin and next to the crumbled wall of some long forgotten structure we breakfasted right infront of most beautiful Bla Bheinn with Beinn Dearg Mhor behind us.
Although the answers are many and varied, this was one of the times I briefly wondered why it is that we (bother to) travel to France and Switzerland for our main holidays.