Day 112 Kylesku to Lochinver

 

 Date: Saturday 28^th July 2012   Distance: 24.46 Miles

 

Rain had woken me at 3 but we slept quite well and there was only us for breakfast. Newton Lodge had been a hotel once with a reception desk still and a lot of rooms but the owners make their main income from chalets down the road. We were discussing midges and told that some nudists rented out the chalets until they encountered them( the midges) in the altogether and made a quick exit. The wind has been bad for midges but good for us!

 

Porridge and scrambled eggs with salmon set us up for the day. It will be a day with not many places if any to stop at. Our shoes are warm but still wet. Stuffing them with newspaper was a kind but misguided act as they don’t get the air to dry.

 

When we started out we thought that we’d go the lesser main road distance of 16 miles as the weather was showery. When we reached the cross roads though we changed our minds as the weather looked better away from the high hill, Beinn  Leóid (2,800ft) behind the B and B. Apparently the Ben determines their local weather.

It was a good decision though extremely hard at first with hairpin bends, narrow road with passing places, a lot of steep ups and a fair amount of traffic but probably less than the other route. It was very pretty with rocky peaty small waterfalls.

 

Drumbeg village stores, with its own web site, next door to a pub closed at lunchtime, provided us with a delicious picnic of creamy smoked Ullapool cheddar and focaccia bread with rosemary followed by fruit and which we ate on their picnic table. At £38 a bottle we didn’t succumb to buying the Drumbeg whisky. Luckily there was an umbrella as today had been showery yet again.

 

There seemed to be more houses and even a camp site. Though still a lot of uphill it was less sharply up. We had to go down slowly too because of the damaged wheel and lack of brake power. So we had to walk a lot. There were lovely views over lochs and in the afternoon water became covered in water-lilies and something like sedge. These later lochs linked to the sea and had salmon farms. Canoes could be hired and we saw a couple setting off from the shore. Drumbeg store hired them out. A man in a camper van shouted out to us.-Had we got our new wheel yet. We didn’t remember him from Durness but I suppose we stick out like a sore thumb.

 

 

As we came into Lochinvar it wasn’t raining and we easily found the B and B run by a Dutchman. Ironically he had a hire bike shop too. Our wheel had arrived and Bob soon fixed the tandem. It was rather a strange place where water continually leaked from a pipe outside and because of the noise of the plumbing we shouldn’t use the loos in the night. We did! It was also a bit cold. It was a place of foreign language and more like a hostel than the hostel itself in Durness. They made us a welcome cup of tea though!

 

The German family had picked the same B and B even though there were several to choose from. We and they ate at the Bistro famous for its pies. There were mountains of them savoury and sweet, spicy and juicy. I tried not to eat all my pastry but didn’t succeed.

 

That evening there were 2 deer in the garden eating the flowers.