Wester Ross

After our grand tour of Skye, we had a few sites to pick up in the north west of Scotland. We spent a night at the bunkhouse in Kinlochewe and used that as a base for our next two sites.

The first of these was a lovely site to the north east of Gairloch.  The area looked a great place to walk, and our site was part way along a path that linked the A832 (at NG8577) and Loch Maree, finishing at Slattadale - definitely a walk to add to my to do list.

Although the site was very beautiful, it wasn't kind to us!  The first time we visited we got caught in the rain. It was over one kilometer walk to our site, and just as we arrived it started to rain. We managed to complete one plant survey before returning to the car in torrential rain with midges swarming. I somehow even managed to get rain in the dry bag of my rucksack - pretty much everything I owned was wet. Luckily the car keys stayed dry, and everything dried out overnight in the drying room at the bunkhouse.

We returned the next day to complete the site. I had one plant survey to do by myself, and failed to navigate the best way to the start point of the survey, meaning that I climbed up a hill completely needlessly only to find I actually should be at the base of a steep rocky cliff!  I got there eventually, and my transect then took me down the valley crossing a stream several times. I was glad to get back to the car and leave the site behind!

We chased the weather all the way to our next site but unfortunately wasn't able to complete as the next weather front was coming in rapidly. There was time for a quick lunch stop at Rogie Falls though, and I saw my first salmon leaping upstream.