We stay near Craig

Our cottage belongs to Craig Highland Farm, a kind of petting zoo with also exotic animals and our house is on the beach, just over the railway. A train from Inverness goes to the Kyle of Lochalsh every day. The operator blows his whistle for a while before approaching the unguarded transition, and when he sees us he kindly raises his hand and people in the train wave enthusiastically.

First we go to Strome Castle, a deserted ruin of the 15th century. Until 1973 you went to Kyle of Lochalsh (just before the crossing to the Isle of Skye) with the Strome ferry, but the road now goes along the southeast coast of Loch Carron and the ferry no longer sails. The visitors also disappeared, but there is no longer the sign 'prohibited entry due to danger of collapse' that was still there a few years ago. Apparently the NTS (National Trust for Scotland), the administrator of many castles in Scotland, has worked on this.

We drive further to the south and at a certain moment we can see our own little house with binoculars. Now that the ferry is no longer sailing, there is virtually no tourist on this road, but we drive it all the way to the end and the views certainly make it worthwhile.

Then we drive back and explore the many roads around Craig and Plockton on the southeast side of the saltwater trail. The sun has now driven almost all the clouds and it seems almost summer, except that it is not warmer than 15 degrees!

We drive some more side roads north of the A87, the highway to Skye and we are glad that we have been here so often that we have time for this kind of roads, because there are nice places to find that you would otherwise overlook. In that respect, we are far from bored in Scotland!

We did not have many plans for today because bad weather was predicted, but now that it is so beautiful we do go back early in the afternoon to our house and with the sun the surroundings look beautiful.

The temperature has risen to 19 degrees Celsius and we can sit outside ... together with a few million midges! Midges are tiny flies that have never heard of DEET or other insect repellent stuff and can bite viciously. The llamas do not worry about them and they wave a bit with their tails. Midges seem to cost the Scottish economy tens of millions a year.

But this place makes up for the midges (and now it is dry and sunny), we have rarely had a house or tent in such a beautiful spot. Time to make some self-portraits with this background. And then again putting something on to protect our arms against the mosquitoes.

The view over the bay of Loch Carron is fantastic and we do not get enough of it, especially not because the tides make the bay and the beach look different every hour. There are a few islands off the coast where seals sometimes seem to be are sitting, but we do not see them. However, every day a few boats with tourists from Plockton pass by in search of seals and occasionally we hear a tour guide telling us about the llamas that live here on the coast.

We do not have anything more to say about these photos: think that you are sitting there and imagine looking at such a view. We can watch for hours, take pictures and forget our books and the rest! This day we have made dozens of photos, just from this viewpoint.

In the evening I go looking for shells, but after 8 o'clock it quickly gets colder but the midges stay. So I wear a coat as protection and later on I make a campfire to sit at, a good end of the day, against all weather forecasts. Tomorrow another day?