The Road goes Ever On

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

J. R. R. TOLKIEN (As Bilbo Baggins), The Fellowship of the Ring

For the first time in many years we are remaining at Snail Towers and not venturing forth with the Snail at the beginning of June. It feels strange, but you know how it is, there's stuff that needs doing at home and so here we are, still here.

We're feeling the pull of the road though, which put me in mind of the above quotation - roads are seductive things. In The Fellowship of The Ring Bilbo goes on to observe that the same little road that goes past Bag End in Hobbiton is the same road that, eventually leads through Mirkwood to the Lonely Mountain where the Dragon Smaug once kept his hoard and ravaged the town of Dale.

In other words, roads lead to adventure!

It's a trope that has persisted throughout the twentieth century and into the twentyfirst, through all forms of fiction from Jack Kerouac to Mad Max -via the Blues Brothers and who knows what else? What are the delightfully silly and insanely popular Fast and Furious movies about if not the love of the road?*

And so, sitting here in Snail Towers, I find myself reflecting on old Bilbo's words. Just as the road outside Bag End led ultimately to the Lonely Mountain, and as young Frodo would later discover, also through Rohan, and Moria, and Minas Tirith to the heart of Mordor, the road outside Snail Towers will lead us along an unbroken ribbon of asphalt to Bunree and Altnaharra, to Leek and Buxton, to Minehead and Hastings - to wherever we want to go.

The lure of the road is pretty well irresistable - as I've always said, one of the joys of the caravan lifestyle is the getting to the destination, not just the destination itself.

It's fair to say though, that not all roads are created equal.

If you read the post I wrote about The Long, High Road way back in November 2012, and the four sequel posts that made up High Road North Series in August the following year then you'll already know some of my favourites.

The A66 between Scotch Corner and Penrith, for example, sports a tank base (although we've never actually seen a tank there we continue to live in hope), castles, and some breathtaking scenery as you descend from the heights of the Pennines into the lowlands of Cumbria, and then on towards the hills of the Lake District - taking you, at least in part along the old Roman Road which gives you at least a little bit of a sense of history.

Then there's the A82, across the splendour of Rannoch Moor, through Glencoe and along the Great Glen. The magnivicent twenty odd miles of desolation between Lairg and Altnaharra, the A836 which runs almost the entire length of Scotland from Durness in the West to John O' Groats in the East, and provides some astonishing views of the coast and sea lochs of the far, far north. Mind you, John O'Groats is a massively disappointing place, so you probably don't want to go all the way to the end...

There are of course many other roads that are far less attractive. Not a big fan of the A9 south of Inverness, for example. There are few roads in the country more desperate to become dual carriageways! In our pre-caravan days the A9 was our original route to Inverness on the way up to Assynt. I don't think we ever drove that route - in either direction - without getting stuck for miles and miles behind a succession of slow moving lorries and tractors. And for the record - I have no memories of ever getting stuck behind a caravan.

It was frustration with driving in long, bad tempered convoys that made us switch from the East Coast route north to the West Coast route north which we now know as "the long  high road".

Not that the long high road is totally perfect. The stretch of the A74/M74 between the boarders and Glasgow is pretty featureless for a start, and although the A82 features many fine views, like the A9 is suffers badly from being not really big enough to take the volume of traffic it now has to accomodate. As you drive towards Fort William there are many signs demanding an upgrade  - and I have to say that if the A82 was in the South East of England it would probably be at least a dual carriageway and maybe even a motorway by now.

The same can be said of the A1 as it runs through Northumberland. A lot of money and effort has gone into the upgrading of this historic arterial route though Yorkshire (which of course is only fitting - Yorkshire deserves nothing but the best) so that it's a three lane motorway all the way though England's greatest county. But once you hit Northumberland it's not only not motorway, most of it is not even dual carriageway! Given that the road doesn't much less busy through the far north east of England than it is through Yorkshire this seems more than a little unfair. 

And of course, there is the abomination that is the M25. There's a joke in the book Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman that a demon altered the course of London's "orbital motorway" so that it forms "the sigil *odegra* in the language of the Black Priesthood of Ancient Mu, and means 'Hail the Great Beast, Devourer of Worlds'." Well, people say it was a joke. Having driven along it with a caravan on the back personally I can believe that this is true.

I mean, intellectually I know it's just a very big ring road. But seriously, if you're looking for the most benighted stretch of tarmac in the world, you don't need to look much further. The surface is frequently terrible, the traffic is awful - I got the impression that every single other motor vehicle was deliberately trying to kill everybody else and if you find yourself on the eastern half you have to contend with the Dartford Crossing.

Yikes.

We took the Snail to Essex once (a much maligned county which we found to be beautiful) and had to brave the Dartford Crossing. You'd think it would be easy. It's a road that goes over a bridge. How hard can that be?

Well, somebody seems to have engineered the whole thing so that you can't avoid getting into the wrong lane at the toll booths, and at the same time devised a method of forcing you to join the traffic from the other toll booths at such an angle that you can't quite see what's coming. I mean, if they'd done that on purpose it would be a work of genius! As it is, well, let's just say we really enjoyed our trip to Essex, but we've not been back...

These are all details though. There is more to the idea of "the road" than mere geography and civil engineering.

The Road (and it deserves the capitalisation) is freedom. It can take you away from where you are to where you want to be. You might be driving to work in the morning. You might not be looking forward to the day. But you can take comfort in the fact that if you turn left instead of right at that junction the road doesn't have to take you to work, it can take you quite literally anywhere. You won't, of course, but you can. And if you've got a caravan on the back you can go as far as you like.





As Tolkien put it:



Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still 'round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.



*And I bet that's the first time anyone's ever referenced that paeon of praise to the petrolhead in a blog about caravans...

Gathering again in Glencoe.

Here at Snail Towers we have mixed feelings about Glencoe.

It is, as anyone who has hiked, cycled or driven through it (or seen Skyfall) will know, breathtakingly, jaw droppingly, heart breakingly beautiful. It doesn't matter what time of year you go there, there is always something to delight the eye and thrill the senses. It's a magical location - indeed I've gone on about how brilliant it is at some length in the past.

So why the mixed feelings?

Well, Glencoe is a few miles south of the Caravan Club site at Bunree, and Bunree is our usual stop-over spot on the way south after a visit to Strathnaver. On our way north we tend not to hang around, which means that leisurely visits to Glencoe almost always mean we're on our way home and they can sometimes be tinged with a touch of "end of holiday blues".

So it was on this occasion. We were heading hoime from our blissful break at Grummore in the far north, and had paused for two nights at Bunree, figuring a day off from driving might make us less zombified on our return, as well as giving us a chance to spend some time taking in the aforementioned magnificence of Glencoe.

So, our one full day at Bunree began with a lazy start, a full "caravan breakfast" of bacon, eggs, fried bread and coffee, before we set out to take in the beauty of the glen. The cloud was low on this late spring day, and there was more than a hint of drizzle in the air. It didn't matter.

The heads of the hills on either side of the glen were visible, and they towered over us as we made our way from the sea level northern end of the glen, along the A82, climbing up towards the southern exit of the glen on Rannoch Moor.

If you're coming from the north, the first thing you see as you enter the glen is Loch Achtriochtan. As lochs go it's pretty tiny - you'd lose it a thousand times over in Loch Naver or Loch Shin, but as I've been insisting for most of my life, size isn't everything. This roundish sheet of water often acts as a perfect mirror, and it offers any number of perfect photo opportunities on a bright clear day as the hills and the sky are reflected in its surface. It can be heartbreakingly lovely.

This day, however, was not such a day.

The sky was grey. The clouds were low, the sky was grey and the loch was rippled by a steady breeze, so reflections were out of the question. Glencoe, like so many other stunning locations in Scotland is in no way dependent on the weather for its beauty. We drove on, up the glen, the mountains on either side of us brooding beneath leaden skies, the grey asphalt ribbon of the A82 led us up and on to the northern edge of Rannoch Moor.

Where we promptly turned around and headed back down through the glen.

You see, Glencoe is always a spectacle, but it's far more spectacular when approached from the south. Approaching from the heights of Rannoch Moor, suddenly deep grey craggy rocks rise up on either side of you as the road sweeps you around to the right, over a gorge cut by one of the branches of the rive coe with a huge waterfall on your left.

In the heat of the summer this waterfall, which drops the river coe about forty feet into the gorge, is little more than a plucky trickle. But in the spring, when the rain that Scotland is so famous for joins forces with the snow melting on the peaks of the mountains it transforms into an angry, roaring, frothing cascade. It can be truly breathtaking. The road then carries you on, through a gap cut through a towering wall of (I think) granite to form a door like entrance into the glen itself. 

And then, there you are. Coming from the south the road snakes you to the right and along the right hand side of the glen. But now, instead of climbing up a hill, you're starting high and the whole glen (one of the best exposed examples of what my geologist friends refer to as "cauldron subsidence" - I have no idea what that means, but it sure sounds impressive) is laid out before you, and it's astounding.

This view is widely acknowledged to be one of the most spectacular in Scotland, which to our way of thinking makes it one of the most spectacular in the world. There are two main parking areasto the left of the A82 where you can stop and soak it all in, or start any kind of walk from a gentle amble along the valley floor to a more ambitious attempt on the peaks.

Whatever you do though, DON'T stop in either of the main parking spots if you want to sit in your car and gaze at the view in peace, because the chances are you won't get any. It's inevitable that a place of such beauty will attract people who want to enjoy that beauty - we can hardly complain, we're tourists too! However, if you stay with your car you will be permenantly surrounded by scores of people who have been given five minutes to get off their tour coach, get a picture and get back back on the bus. Let's just say they don't add to the air of tranquility and leave it at that.

And then there's the piper. There's almost always a bloody piper.

Now. I love the pipes. I've always loved them. As a kid my Grandma brought me back a "scottish piper" doll from a trip to Edinburgh, and for a very long time I was determined to learn to play the bagpipes like the kilted military men I saw on the White Heather Club at New Years*. Looking bakcm this was a desire my family paid keen lipservice to, but somehow they never managed to find me a set of pipes to play.**

I have to be honest, I can't say I blame them.

But I do love the pipes. Both the traditional styles of the Massed Pipes and Drums and folk hero stalwarts such as Norman MacLean, and the more modern high octane "BagRock" offerings of the likes of the excellent Red Hot Chilli Pipers. There is something ethereal about a well played set of pipes, and you'd imagine that to hear the strains of traditional bagpipes in the heart of Glencoe would be a truly soulful experience.

Sorry. You'd be wrong.

I should be clear. At no point have we ever stopped in Glencoe and been afflicted by the sound of a bad piper. (Which is a mercy, because bad pipe playing is even more offensive to the ear than the wail of a badly played violin.) It's just that there, in the heart of the most spectacular landscape feature Lochaber has to offer***, I want to listen to the wind, to the rain, to the birdsong. Not to another rendition of "Scotland the Brave" or "Highland Cathedral".

It's really intrusive too. You can escape the crowds by getting out of the car and walking for a bit. The drone of the pipes can be heard from one end of the glen to the other if the wind is right.

Anyway.

The grey snake of the A82 drags you northwards around the side of the glen, back past Loch Achtriochtan, out of the glen and on to the village of Glencoe, a couple of miles to the north, nestling on the shores of Loch Leven.

Glencoe isn't a big place, but it's the biggest place within an hour's drive that isn't Fort William and it boasts all the amenities that you might need. There's a garage, a couple of gorcery stores - including a new and rather well appointed Co-op - a couple of hotels, the local Mountain Rescue Station and a fair number of BnBs. And attached to one of the hotels by the side of the A82 is the duck egg blue brilliance of The Glencoe Gathering.

We've eaten here a few times, but I've only written about it once before, on our first visit when the place was pretty new. On that visit we had an unfortunate incident with a garlicky chicken skewer. The fact that on one occasion we were served under-done chicken and yet we still went back tells you how good this place is.

And it really is that good. And I should stress that the bad chicken skewer incident was a true one off that was dealt with at the time and we've never ever had a problem like that since.

We pulled into the gravelled car park and made our way around the side of the wooden building to the front "Muddy Boots" entrance which leads you into the bar area. The rear door, labeled "fancy shoes" takes you into the restairant area - but both parts of the establishment serve the same menu and the view from the bar is better.

We took our seats, ordered drinks, and settled down to admire the view with menus in hand. Mrs Snail immediately went for the garlicky chicken skewers, while I eschewed the regular menu and ordered the Montreal Steak from the specials board. Then we sat back and took in our surroundings.

The bar area is a relaxed and informal space with wooden floors and either white painted or bare brick walls which are decorated with photographs of people climbing in the ice and snow of the winter Nevis Range. There's an acoustic guitar on a guitar stand in one corner bearing many signatures I didn't recognise, and the bar itself in another little niche.

The waitress who served us was clearly new to the job, and monumentally nervous (she eventually confided that it was her first day), but she was charming and, given it was her first day, rather good at it. The softly spoken bearded gentleman behind the bar who was clearly in charge provided her with gentle and relaxed instruction and all was well.

All was ever weller**** when the food arrived.

Those garlic skewers.. ooooooooh

Mrs Snail opted to give the Garlicky Chicken Skewers another try, and they were very, very good indeed. I mean, obviously if you don't like garlic you'd want to steer clear, but everyone else? Oh, you are just going to want to dig in. The garlic isn't overpowering, but it's strong enough that you're getting that hard alium hit. Married up with the onions and peppers with the slightly bitter earthy background from the chargrill the whole thing balances to create perfect harmony in your mouth.

Not the biggest steak in the world, but oh myyyyyyy, the FLAVOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd raided the specials board and plumped for the Montreal Steak. Now, I claim to be a foodie, and I love a good steak, but I'd never heard of a Montreal Steak until I visited the Gathering. Wikipedia however tells me that this is, in face, a thing. Whatever, it was a taste explosion on my tongue with the heat of Cayenne, the flavours of garlic and pepper and I know not what else. Even better, beneath the seasoning was the flavour of really good meaty char-grilled beef. It was juicy. It was tender. It was sublime.

Both meals came with fairly chunky chips (and they were listed as chips on the menu - none of your "fries" nonsense here) that were pale gold, crispy on the outside nad fluffy on the inside, and packed full of potato flavour and the speciality of the house - the salt and pepper salad.

This was something that impressed us on our first visit to The Gathering, and it continues to do so. It's one of those things - now I know about it? It seems like the most obvious thing in the world, but I'd never have thought of it in a million years.

Rocket is a famously peppery salad leaf. Samphire is a famously salty coastal vegetable. Salt and pepper is perhaps the most basic of flavour combinations, so Rocket and Samphire salad is a no-brainer - but have you ever seen it before? Because I haven't.

In short, lunch was amazing!

Everyone should visit Glencoe at least once in thier lives. That means you should visit Glencoe, if you haven't already had that privillage. While you're there, you're going to need to eat. You should eat at the Glencoe Gathering. To do anything else would be a wasted opportunity!





*And yes. I am aware that this dates me.

**Although I noticed with some amusement recently that they were selling them in Lidl, of all places. I was sorely tempted, but resisited becasue I like being married...

***No small claim for a district that also boasts Ben Nevis.

****What? It's a word. I just wrote it!

Our Deer friends, and other animals.

I'm probably going to talk about birds again this week, but not just birds.

You see, one of the many, many things about the northern highlands is the sheer amount of wildlife you can see without making any real effort. A Grummore story I think I've told before on the blog is the time a fellow caravanner we christened "Pink Trousers" because that was all he seemed to wear enquired "Do you ever see Red Deer here?" At the moment he asked the question there were about a dozen of the beasts grazing on the hill behind him.

Like these ladies, looking down on the site from above.

As a kid growing up in the Doncaster of the nineteen seventies and eighties I never really believed I'd ever get to see wild red deer, or birds of prey, or any large wild animal up close. Driving around Sutherland they are, frankly, pretty difficult to avoid. Take these chaps, for example:

Do we have two heads, or are you really bad at photographic composition?

These two were part of a large-ish group of young stags on the road between Syre and Kinbrace. We had to stop the car because several of them were standing inthe middle of the road, while others were perfectly happy just to stand and pose. Like this handsome chap:

You lookin' at me?

Now, I grant you that the road between Syre (which is about half way up Strathnaver, and therefore somewhat off the beaten track) and Kinbrace (which is a tiny rail station in pretty much the middle of nowhere) is not exactly on the high street - you do have to make a bit of an effort to get there. You can get very close to these magnificent creatures without going very far off the main road at all.

Take this guy:

Do you mind? I'm on my lunch break!

 This mature stag (he was massive) was calmly mowing the lawn in one of the gardens in Kylesku the first time we were there. The very nice gentlemen working on the rennovations of the Kylesku Hotel
told us that he was a regular visitor, and that earlier he'd been strutting his stuff up and down the pavement in front of the houses.

Red Deer are the largest wild land animals we have on these islands. An adult stag can weigh the better part of forty stones and stand more than two metres tall. They are very, very impressive creatures to look at and exude a sense of superior disdain that any prey species with no surviving predators might well adopt. Once red deer in the highlands were predated by Lynx and Wolves. These days maybe a hungry fox might have a go at a fawn, but beyond that the only threat they face is humans with rifles - although they are now so numerous in the highlands that there are movements afoot to re-introduce both the Wolf and the Lynx.

Personally, given the dependence of the highland economy on sheep, I think any such reintroduction is unlikely - were I a wolf or a lynx and I had the choice between taking down a sheep or a stag with it's very, very pointy hat, I'd go for the sheep every time, and I really can't see the shepherds being OK with that.

We talked about birds of prey last week, so I won't go into them again. But there is any amount of other birdlife to see in the highlands.

We're the national bird of Finland. Did you know that?

Heading back to Grummore from the east coast we passed a lochan just above Syre and came across this pair of Whooper Swans and their three cygnets.

We'll be the national bird of Finland when we grow up.

They weren't particularly keen on hanging around to say "hello", and cruised off towards the opposite bank as soon as we saw them - in that "we were going over here anyway, it's got nothing to do with you" way that swans have.

Far less shy were the Mute Swans who hang around the Bunree Caravan Club site just south of Fort William. bunree has long been our staging point on the way to the far north, and there's been a family of mute swans there for as long as we've been visiting.

Hello, I'm a mute swan. You will never be this awesome.

Obviously it's easiest to spot the wildlife that just comes to you - like the red deer at Grummore and the mute swans at Bunree. The fact that the wildlife is there though - well that doesn't guarantee it'll actually show itself.

The warden's office at Grummore proudly displays a picture of an Osprey catching a huge trout from the loch just opposite the site - we've never seen ospreys there. The office also displays a picture of a Pine Marten sitting on the bird table that is positioned next to our favourite pitch on the site. We occupoed that pitch for two weeks on our last visit to Strathnacer. We baited the bird table with peanut butter (a pine marten favourite, apparently) every single night. did we see a pine marten?

No. We did not.

That, of course, is the nature of wildlife. It's wild. You can't make it turn up when you want it to.

Which is why we were so thrilled on a trip to Dornoch on the east coast when we pulled into what we think of as the "seal spotting laybay" on the single track road that leads you into Dornoch along the edge of Loch Fleet. There were seals - so-called "Common Seals" or, in my preferred nomenchlature "Harbour Seals", because I refuse to call these glorious amphibious mammals "common".

There's a lot of us, but we're actually very sophisticated.

I've talked about this seal colony before - and they are endlessly entertaining. At low tide you can sit and watch them basking on sandbanks, like decadant Romans lounging on chaise longe.

At high tide you can watch them swimming around, sticking their heads playfully above the water, and generally being happy seals.

I confess, I have a very soft spot for seals. I've spent hours watching them over the years, in the harbour at Lochinver, or the harbour at Stornoway. From a boat off Northumbeerland's Farne Islands to Poole Harbour inDorset.

People make a big thing about swimming with Dolphins, and I acknowledge that  communing with such creatures in their element must be an amazing experience. But frankly, I'd rather swim with seals. They really are engaging creatures with obvious personalities. But on this particular trip it wasn't the seals that impressed us - it was this guy:

You thought that swan was impressive? Well, look at ME!

We pulled into one of the laybys created for wildlife spotting hoping to see seals, and we did - but far more inpressive was this stately heron who was stalking the shoreline looking for food. He strutted and preened, and we watched in fascination.

A lifetime ago, my eight or nine year old self went on a school trip to Doncaster Museum. There I saw a heron that was pickled in a display case. I have no idea why it made such an impact on me, but I remember it to this day.

I never expected to see a real live heron.

The world has changed since I was a kid. These days you can see a heron flap lazily over your head in Doncaster's town centre, and in Harrogate, where I now live. But this heron, on the shores of Loch Fleet was so close I could almost have reached out and touched it.

And THIS is what makes this part of Scotland so special. Wherever you look there are creatures to see that you might never glimpse elsewhere - and if you could see them elsewhere, yu'd never see them so close.

But don't take my word for it. Go and see.

Bird Brained.

One of the things that peiople ask us when we tell them we're intending to spend two weeks by the side of a loch three and a half miles from the nearest street lamp and twenty miles from the nearest shop with no internet and no TV signal is "What on Earth are you going to do?"

For the most part, I have to say that the honest answer is "We'll spend a lot of time looking at the view." Because, seriously, LOOK AT IT!!!!!!!!

We woke up to this every day for a fortnight. What more do you need?

I'll acknowledge that even we don't spend all day everyday gazing at the horizon though. As you already know if you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you'll know that we go out and eat a lot of lunch, and we visit a fair few museums and castles and such.

But not when we're at Grummore. Grummore is a place for taking it easy. For sitting around. So, what do we do?

Well, a lot of people spend time fishing. I'm not a fisherman myself, but I've seen enough fish caught there to understand that there's some good fishing to be had on Loch Naver. To fish away from the site you need to get a permit from the Strathnaver Fisheries, but you can fish from the shore of the site as much as you like.

But as I said, we don't do that.

What we do is watch the birds.

Strathnaver is a magnet for our avian friends. As I've mentioned before, all you have to do is put a bit of seed out to attract every chaffich for miles around.

And they just kept getting fatter...

The loch is also home to rarer species. We've been privillaged to see pairs of Black Throated Divers cruising along the water in early spring. These sleek aquatic birds are summer visitors, migrating in

Yes, I know. It's a terrible photo. What can I say? The little bugger wouldn't stay still!

from wintering grounds around the Mediterranian. You're unlikely to see them on land - they're perfectly adapted to swimming, but their legs are so far back on their bodies they really struggle to walk.

They can be difficult to spot on the water too. They sit very low on the surface, so if there's any swell at all they just disappear behind the waves. Combine that with the fact that they also spend a lot of their time below the waves (they're not called "divers" for nothing!) spotting them can be a bit of a "blink and you'll miss it" experience.

Of course, the Black Throated Diver wasn't the least cooperative photographic subject...

The same is true of their red throated cousins (sort of pictured above). They're not as rare as the black throats, but they're still not common and we've seen a pair at Grummore every year we've been - except this year when the solitary chap pictured above spent a couple of days mooching around on his own before moving on.

We chose to believe that he'd simply arrived earlier than his mate - or perhaps if he really was male, slightly later because he refused to stop for directions and ended up coming the long way 'round - rather than accepting the more probable scenario of his companion not having survived the trip. I would like to pretend that this is because we're inherently optimistic but I suspect the truth is that we're just painfully sentimental.

Russ, the ever helpful site warden, tells us that a pair of Great Northern Divers can also be seen on Loch Naver, but we've never been lucky enough to catch a glimpse. We've similarly struck out catching sight of the White Tailed Sea Eagle which we are assured often makes it's way down the strath from the coast.

We were luckier with the Golden Eagle which is also resident in Strathnaver. We've been keen to see it for as long as we've been visiting but until this latest trip we'd been unsuccessful.

Eagle spotting in the Highlands can get frustrating. Everywhere you go they seem to have seen one "last week" or "yesterday" or even "just this morning", but never "oh yes, it's behind you!". Add to that the fact that buzzards, which are superficially similar in outline, although about half the size, are almost literally ten a penny and you have a recipe for spending whole days staring at the sky, occasionally getting excited before realising "nah, it's just a buzzard".

And I thought Red Throated Divers were elusive...

To be honest, eagle spotting is a lot like watching golf - hours and hours of staring at empty sky looking in vain for a little black dot that always turns out to be where you're not actually looking at the time.

In the end, we were actually standing lochside with a couple of fellow caravanners bemoaning the fact that we had never managed to see so much as an eagle feather, let alone the whole bird, when one soared lazily over our heads, and then on down the loch and over the horizon.


It's funny. Often when you build something up into a real quest when you finally achieve your goal it can feel a little anti climactic.

Not this.

This was every bit as magnificent as I'd imagined. The wingspan of an adult golden eagle can be over seven feet - more than two feet wider than I am tall* and I'd be prepared to bet that from splayed wingtip to splayed wingtip this example was at the larger end of the spectrum. It was like watching a house door glide effortlessly above us, silent as a trappist grave. One this is certain - having seen the real thing there is no way we'll ever look at a buzzard and wonder if it's an eagle.

Sadly, however stately its flight appeared to be, actually getting it into the field of view of the camera proved impossible - the picture above is the best shot we got, and as you can see, the eagle is not in it so you'll have to take our word that it was there. Don't be too hard on our photographic failure though - when they're not in a rush golden eagles soar at about thirty miles per hour, which made this a rapidly moving target against an almost featureless sky.

We'll do better next time I promise.

The golden eagle was pretty much the ornathological highlight of the trip. In the warden's office there is a fabulous photograph of an osprey catching a trout in the loch opposite the site which was taken last year, but we were a bit early of ospreys when we were there - maybe next time...

We don't just  watch birds, but they don't half make the view more interesting. And we're still holding out for the White Tailed Sea Eagle. Come back next week for more info on things to do in the highlands without electronic gadgets!







*Yes, I'm five foot six. Yes, I'm a shortarse.