Skip to main content

That's it!

In the morning it didn’t know whether to rain or not. We put on wellies and waterproof trousers and walked a little further along from the end of the road. There was water everywhere but the emerging view to Jura and Scarba and also up the coast was beautiful.

There are so many islands and inlets that a map is needed to work out what is where. We never did see the Paps of Jura due to cloud but we could see over to Luing and Seil, where we were due to visit someone later in the day.

The marshy land off the end of the car park was full of standing water. As it drained over the edge, down the rocks and into the sea, it formed a great temporary cascade.




Below us, at a holiday cottage I assume, a few small children were crabbing off a small pier. They’d obviously caught something big because it was the squeals of excitement that first attracted our attention and binoculars that explained what was happening.

Moving up the coast towards Oban we turned to go to Seil. There’s the most amazing bridge and a convenient place to park, opposite the inn which is closed due to CoVID19.






We visited a friend from the LR4x4 forum at his house on Seil. It’s a sign of these CoVID19 times that he normally drives 30-40K miles annually as he moves up and down the west coast for work and yet this year he’s hardly driven at all. He’s managing forestry operations from the dining room table!

Later we drove to the end of another road, on the south side of Loch Etive, not far inland. Yet again it was a prime quiet spot. No waves, just a slow rise and fall of the water with the tide. Dawn spotted otters swimming past, just before dusk. That is a first and so a holiday bonus 😀


The drip came back but this time I was ready with a temporary countermeasure. The proper solution of sealant will have to wait.


We decided to drive home the next morning. The scenery is stunning in Autumn and we stopped for a photo, drove over ‘Rest and be Thankful’ then had coffee at Loch Lomond.

There we came across two intrepid Mums with kids 😱




Also we spoke to a guy acting as support for his adult son and two others. They had just arrived on road bicycles and were wolfing down porridge. They are on the last leg of the three peaks but cycling in between the mountains. Wow. ‘Way to go’ as they say in the USA. 

So that’s it. A trip in the cool season which lasted ten nights and it worked!
We will come back and we won’t wait ten years next time. 



Labels:

Comments

Rachel said…
Fantastic trip Tim. I've loved reading about it - thanks for your amazing blog.
I'm up next week on Thursday but will be on public transport so Hope based....x
22 October 2020 at 16:45
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The empty map of Macedonia and into Greece

Continuing south towards the Serbia / Macedonia border, the satnav warned of a lack of detail, "do you wish to continue with this route?" However we are not intrepid explorers and Macedonia comes with a few " be careful" warnings, so we decided to stay on the motorway :-) We didn't explore Serbia; it will wait for another trip. So it was on to the border. Here, passport and V5 were required again and also proof of insurance. We didn't have any of course. When we rang the UK insurance company call centres prior to the trip, most had no idea where these countries are. They don't understand non-EU. "Macedonia - can you spell that"? The nice man at the passport office was already expecting me to say that I would buy my insurance at the "Green card office" and he handed back one passport and the V5 and put mine in his pocket until I had the necessary paper for the Landy. Unfortunately in spite of the Land Rover being classed as PL...
9 comments
Read more

"I'm the dog"

El Berro and  Camping Sierra Espuña  are nicely positioned for walking in these 'low' Sierras and of course the obligatory GR XYZ  long distance path crosses the village. The campsite people gave us a couple of short walk suggestions, written on A4 and translated by some English guy, Michael Ball. We waited until the end of the afternoon, so that the temperature was somewhat manageable and then picked one of the ~1 hour walks that start at the campsite. The walk is so simple that there's no description, just a small diagram that's well annotated with the type of path (wide main track / footpath), other markers (gate, incorrect route, fence). You can't go wrong, can you? Well the first part was easy. Follow the path out of the village, up a valley, through woodland, up and up. Then reach the ridge and the marked ring of stones. Don't turn right, carry on straight across. Then wander through a few trees and down to a dry riverbed, at which point you walk the (ve...
6 comments
Read more

Quiet Spain

Flamenco had been advertised for 17:30, at the campsite restaurant. The campsite isn't busy yet as it isn't July or August, which seems to be the only time any quantity of Spaniards go on their holidays. The restaurant is commensurably quiet too but we thought we'd go and listen. I'd assumed that Flamenco is just guitar with some clapping but here we had a couple of guys, one who could play the guitar, properly and one who could sing, properly. The guitarist often played two different melodies simultaneously and without checking Google, I think that is Flamenco. I was expecting the other guy just to clap, Flamenco style but clapping was a mere sideline, as he could sing. It was no ordinary lament but a serious, sad almost haunting sound and I only wish that I understood the words. It was a very informal session. I should say that this clip isn't particularly representative of the Flamenco style that I think they were playing! A bigger draw however, was th...
7 comments
Read more