Day 116 Gairloch to Shieldaig

 

 Date: Wednesday 1^st August 2012   Distance: 39.16 Miles

 

It was a buffet breakfast and quiet at 8. They catered for European Internationals well with cold meats and peanut butter and traditional English breakfast without the haggis. This place encourages motorcyclists and it was in a specific workshop for them that we left our bike overnight.

 

We left in sun but with a 20 mile an hour wind. Along the roadside was a 1 metre diameter green pipe taking water for the hydro- electric power stations and a small loch on the right was also for electricity purposes. Nearby we met a man walking his dog with a carrier bag full of very large ceps. He believes this area to produce the best in the world and guards their precise location. As we spoke 2 RAF jets flew low overhead.

 

Not far down the road Bob suddenly shouted out and swerved, telling me to jump off. I wondered what was wrong but then he said “Quick take a photo!” He had narrowly missed crushing a lizard under our back wheel with a couple of centimetre to spare. It played dead for a little while then moved sinuously to the grass cover at the side of the road. Normally they would have shot away rapidly but it was cooler today with the wind.

 

We were soon in coats with rain and hail but then it was warm again. Constantly changing it rained yet again and it was against the wind for some way. It was a beautiful ride despite the stream of traffic that caused us to move into passing places. We rescued a brown and orange butterfly from the middle of the road identified a s a meadow brown from a butterfly chart that we later bought at the Beinn Eighe Visitor Centre. This was great for kids having lots of hands on exhibits and it was free. We watched a lesser spotted woodpecker on the feeders then left for the Kinlochewe hotel about a mile away for lunch.

 

The landlady here had seen our German family now joined by the eldest son. We knew he was coming over and a family of 6 on bikes has got to be rare out here so we were sure it was them and it was good to hear that they were still going strong! The land lady felt sorry for them in the rain and on the windy hills.

 

We arrived at the Torridon Inn at 3. A sign said that muddy boots and wellies were welcome while children played games and people chatted- it seemed a very relaxed place and we thought it a shame we were only there for afternoon tea.

 

After 36 miles we arrived at Sheildaig, a lovely village beside Loch Torridon. The B and B, Kinloch was about a mile away. Here we had a whole floor of a house to ourselves with a fabulous view through a picture window so who needed a TV?

 

The sitting room faced a special island that has a heronry, a white tailed eagle’s nest and the trees have been used in the past for poles for drying fishing nets. Owned by the Scottish National Trust it is possible to see otters so we sit scanning the loch, sky and island after a lovely dinner cooked by our host (I coveted and was given the lentil soup recipe) until it is too dark to see. Two seals criss-crossed the waters all evening and a bat feasted on the midges, the worst so far, it looked like rain but was thousands of the little biters. A few seconds was more than enough time outside. There were countless birds in and out of the rowans and on the under -side of the bracken for either insects or the seeds. We stayed at the window till the sun set.