To Applecross and beyond…

The weather today is grey and the sky leaden – not many chances for attractive photography unfortunately.  Need to keep our eyes open for opportunities!

It’s  such a shame as the reason for this detour is the magnificent scenery around this remote area.  Astonishing to think that it wasn’t until 1975 that a road was built to connect Applecross with Shieldaig.  Before that a boat was necessary!

This photo, although not a good one as it was taken through the windscreen, shows the type of road it is.

When it’s not winding its way across open country it is diving around the coastline.  The Red Cuillins of Skye can clearly be seen across the water.

This last photo shows the road down to  An Cruinn-Leum, an amazing coral pink coloured beach.  I spotted a dog as I was taking another photo of the beach which, on investigation, turned out to be another young stag (bottom right), making it the third such creature we have seen in odd situations this trip.

You can’t have missed the Highland Bull at the head of this blog, looking like a grumpy Boris Johnson when told Brexit had lost the EU referendum by one vote!  Sorry, couldn’t resist a political joke…

Well, here is his mate who seems to have an unreachable itch – unreachable by ordinary cows that is – what a good use for those horns!

Nice to see that the mobile library bus provides a useful service in these remote parts.

Another of my postboxes:

Could this be Cliff Cottage below?

This is typical of the houses that dot the grassy slopes down to the water around here – mostly farms I should imagine.  Some of the roads down to them are not as sophisticated as this one and so postboxes obviously save the postman’s tyres!

Eventually we reach the outskirts of Applecross, which has a lot of history behind it.  One day we must visit the Heritage Centre here to find out more.

No visit to Applecross would not be complete without an ice cream from the silver capsule that has a contract with the nearby Applecross Inn.  These home-made ice creams are fantastic!  Last time I had treacle flavour but this time it was lime curd plus amaretti biscuit.  Unfortunately I had finished mine before thinking of taking a photograph of it! Peter had Raspberry Gelato.

So, now it was time for our ascent of the highest mountain in Scotland at over 2000 ft, the Bealach na Ba, or the Pass of the Cattle.

I wish I had taken a photo of the incident that happened near the top.  We were coming up to an area which you could actually park in for a few moments to admire the view and we had a vehicle close behind. A woman in a small red car who was descending decided not to take advantage of the stopping place to wait for us to pass but started driving down!  I put up my hand in a ‘stop’ motion but she just glared and motioned for us to reverse back to the nearest passing place.  Now, considering that the road is a track and the drop either side is hair-raising in the extreme, and the vehicle behind us would have to do the same, this was something we weren’t prepared to do!  In the end she grumpily tried to reverse the short distance to the flat bit but was so rattled she nearly hit the safety barrier on her left.  Suddenly a cyclist in all the gear opened her door and persuaded her to let him do the reversing.  This was expertly done and we sailed past – carefully!  It was a relief to reach the top.

Going down the other side was incident free but was equally hairy.  I tried to take photos through the windows to show just how hairy but I don’t think they adequately show it. Anyway, here goes – a slideshow no less…

 

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Makes me feel sick just watching it!

The journey onward was incident-free and we soon found ourselves driving through the little twin road/rail tunnel the other way at Loch Carron

We stopped at the carpark for Eilean Donan for a break.  Always photogenic and irresistable to us.

It was now a solid drive through Glenshiel, Glengarry and the other glens, finally arriving at the campsite at Glencoe at about 4.30pm.  Peter relaxed and fell asleep quite quickly. It’s been a long day…