Grummore to Kylesku.Enjoy the ride!

If you read the last posting here you'll already know that we spent most of our most recent sojourn to the wonderful Strathnaver area paddling on the Loch, bird watching and ducking whenever the RAF flew over (or occasionally under) us. But you simply cannot go to such an outstanding area of natural beauty and not want to get out into the landscape, so we did venture off on the occasional tour of the countryside.

When you decide to do this you realise two things. The first is that you have to drive rather a long way to actually get to anywhere. The second is that because of this, you might as well go anywhere. Grummore is almost exactly bang slap in the middle of the north of Scotland. The West Coast is an hour and a half or so away. So is the East Coast. The North Coast is a little closer, but on this particular day we decided to head west, with the ultimate aim of hitting the wonderful Kylesku Hotel for lunch.

So, off we set. A sharp left turn out of the campsite and then away we went. It's about eighty miles from Grummore to Kylesku, depending on the route you take, although there are no shortcuts in this part of the world. Whichever way you go though, if you keep your eyes open there's a lot to see. If only there was a way to condense the trip into five minutes or so.

Oh, hang on:

Hang on a little longer...

OK, yes, I have a new app on my phone that does time lapse videos, but for some reason Blogger won't upload it. You can view it on YouTube here though.You might see a few more of these if I can get Blogger to behave, it was rather fun. i should just confirm that no speed limits were broken in the production of the video...

Gimmicks aside though, it's nice to be able to show you some of the splendour of the landscape I keep banging on about. There are several unlabelled pauses on the video which were basically caused by either myself or Mrs Snail spotting something interesting. Usually it was either a buzzard or a group of red deer - it's not clear on the video but at the point where we stop to look at Red Deer a whole flock of them had run across the road in front of us. A truly magnificent sight - most of them were young stags, so it was a bit like watching a bewintered forest running up the hill.

We also stopped at the southern end of Loch More to watch some newly arrived Whooper Swans (and yes, I got the spelling wrong on the video) gliding along in a most stately fashion. I'm rather fond of swans, and these massive migrants - the largest swans in the northern hemisphere - were an unexpected delight. They're not a terribly common breed in this part of the world, but they really are magnificent.

Beyond Loch More you come out onto the  A894 and turn south. The immediate thing you notice is that suddenly you're driving on a road that has two lanes! After so many miles on single track it genuinely tales a minute or two to get used the the idea that you don't need to slow down and work out where the next passing place is when you see somebody coming the other way...

The road takes you south, through the little village of Scourie - which boasts a very fine General Store, a useful thing to know in this land without supermarkets - and then on to the viewpoint above Kylestrome and then the viewing point for the beautiful Kylesku Bridge. I banged on at some length about this sleek masterpiece of concrete engineering and the ferry service it replaced in a previous post so for now I'll just show you what it looks like:

Nice, innit?

We didn't pause here just to look at the bridge though. The car park also accommodates a memorial to the brave men of the Royal Navy who used the cold waters of the Lochs to train in the operation of

midget submarines and manned torpedoes during the Second World War.

The midget subs were crewed by four men and carried was used to place two ton charges beneath enemy ships. Claustrophobe that I am, I can't imagine anything worse.

The "Manned Torpedo" was even more insane, although at least clautrophobia wouldn't have been an issue. Basically two blokes in diving gear sat astride a great big torpedo and rode it up to the target before detaching the warhead.

The memorial carries the names of the submariners involved, and a brief description of the vessels

they used. As was the case with the Commando training around Spaen Bridge the locals kept the aquatic goings on here secret even after the war. This memorial was not erected until 1993, and that was mostly because the activities of the XII Submarine Flotilla was classified for many years after hostilities ceased.

Beyond the bridge, it is a matter of a few hundred yards to the car park by the Kylesku Hotel where we had a fine meal and some unexpected conversation - about which, more next time.

Meanwhile, back in Strathnaver...

I've told you about the Caravan Club's excellent site at Grummore/Altnaharra before. I've even taken you for a bit of a stroll around the place in a posting when we took the the Road Snail up there early last summer. Last week's post was mostly written while I sat by the bonnie banks of Loch Naver enjoying the endless changes of light and looking for the Eagle which everyone else claimed to see "almost daily". Regrettably as I write this I'm back at home, the Snail is on the drive and what I have to consider "real life" has resumed.

I hate it when it does that.

Still, our eight night stay was a spectacularly good one - the theme of the week would appear to have been "rainbows", as the heady mix of sunshine and showers meant we saw several of them. Indeed, as we travelled north from Bunree along the Great Glen a rainbow actually chased us the full ten mile length of Loch Lochy.

It's a four hour drive from Bunree to Grummore, but an early start meant we got there before lunch and were sitting lochside with a glass of wine by early afternoon. In the rain. And high winds. Seriously, Loch Naver was so rough there were actually breaking waves - you could have surfed it! But do you know what? We really didn't care. We were greeted by the perennially cheerful warden and another rainbow before settling down to enjoy the view.

This was a different raimbow later in the week. This is the view though...

That really was the pattern of the week. We went on the odd excursion - more of which in a later post - but the majority of our time was spent on and around the site watching birds, ogling the view and pottering about on our little inflatable kayak. 

Enoch (so named because it perpetually leans to the right) is a new addition to our equipment list, bought with the express intention of spending some time afloat on Loch Naver. In truth we'd have vastly preferred a more solid boat but the inflatable was sturdy enough and was much, much easier to fit into the car! 

If I'm honest my cunning plan was to use the kayak to paddle over to the broch located on a small island on the other side of Loch Naver. By all accounts it's in a much better state of preservation than the example to be found on the site itself, which if we're honest is essentially a pile of rubble. This turned out to be a little ambitious however. A quarter of a century ago as a younger, fitter Venture Scout I did a lot of kayaking and got to be reasonably good at it. While I soon found that the skills hadn't left me, after twenty five years of relative inactivity it seems that my upper body strength really had. The broch was clearly a little over-ambitious so we restricted ourselves to the aforementioned pottering about. 

It was still wonderful - as proof I submit this waterbourne video of absolutely nothing happening.

 

Lolling about on the water was terribly relaxing though, and we'll get to the broch next time...

Life on the site is the epitome of relaxation really - although if you have an interest in birds of 'planes, a relaxation which is punctuated by moments of intense excitement. Strath Naver is often used by the Royal Airforce, and indeed airforces of other nations, for training purposes and the sight of fast jets skimming down the loch is not unusual. They are often eye-wateringly low, which from my perspective as a 'plane nut is all to the good.

Obviously the R.A.F. operates a minimum altitude policy, and even here, which must surely qualify as one of the least built up areas in the country fixed wing aircraft are forbidden to fly below 100 feet and I would hate to suggest that any pilots would ever breach that. All I'm saying is that after a little saunter up the hill in the middle of the week we were there I had the immense privilage of watching an R.A.F. C-130 Hercules transport 'plane pass below me as it made its way along the strath.

This was actually the third C-130 we'd seen over the week, two more having come over at roughly the same height a day or two earlier. We were also lucky enough to see several Tornado GR-4s doing their thing, also flying deliciously low.

Again, I would never suggest that pilots of Her Majesty's forces would ever fly below the limit. I do however have two things on good authority. The first is that once they drop into the Strath 'planes are off radar and so their bosses can't be sure how high they are. The second is that several reliable witnesses claim to have seen an R.A.F. Typhoon fly down the loch so low that it left a wake. 

We're going to pause for a moment to reflect on how magnificent that is*.

The 'planes aren't the only attraction though. Me and Mrs Snail also love to watch the birds, and Loch Naver is a magnificent place to spot our avian friends. I've mentioned the birdfeeder we carry around with us before, and as ever at this site it was perpetually swarming with Chaffinch, Siskin and Blue Tits. We also had slightly less regular visits from Wheatears, Pied Wagtails and, erm, Sheep:

They like birdseed. Who knew?

I already mentioned the eagle that everybody else saw "almost daily". We're pretty sure we caught a couple of glimpses of a Golden Eagle, but never saw it clearly enough to be absolutely sure. A White Tailed Sea Eagle has also been sighted on the loch, but so far we've never had so much as a glimpse of it.

We have, however, on many occasions seen pairs the rare Red Throated Diver, and the even rarer Black Throated variety - both of which we were privillaged to see again on this trip. The real ornathological highlight of the week however came not at Grummore but on a trip to the East Coast - so I'll save that story for a later post.

The real star of the show though, is always that view. I could happily spend a week sitting looking at it with a glass of wine in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other...

...I mean seriously - look at that!

One windless frosty morning we even woke up to see "sundogs":

See them? Either side of the sun...

The most astonishing spectacle provided by the view came on our last day, however. We had been scheduled to leave on the saturday, but we were enjoying ourselves so much that we extended for an extra night which meant we left on Easter Sunday 2014.

I have to say, we were initially disappointed. We raised the blinds that morning to be greeted by thick fog - not only could we not see across the loch, we couldn't see the loch itself! 

Feeling more than a little chagrined that we were to be deprived of one last look at the beauty of Loch Naver and Ben Klibreck we began the "packing up routine". As we did so, however, the fog began to burn off. As it thinned glimpses of the opposite shore began to appear, and then, this:

I have no idea what to call it. It's not a rainbow - a "fogbow" I guess? Here's how it fitted into the general view:

Pretty, itsn't it? The phenomenon only lasted a few minutes before the sun climbed a little higher nad the fog thinned a little more.

By the time we were hitched up and ready to go we were once again bathed in brilliant sunshine beneath a gin clear sky. Strathnaver is a hard place to leave when it's like that, but I suppose if you don't leave you can never go back, and going back is something we're already looking forward to.

*And yes, before anybody says it, of course such things totally upset the peace and tranqulity of the area. But they only do it for a few seconds at a time, and a jet at twenty feet isn't noticeably louder than a jet at one hundred feet. They have to train, and frankly  - given that most of the time flying low makes our pilots less likely to attract hostile fire, I'm happy for them to fly as fast and as low as they like.