Day 6, 21/6/2013

After a fitful sleep we face the dawn through a thick cloud of midges (still!). away from the wild camp without breakfast we had east in the direction of our next reprovisioning stop via a twisting and undulating road in thick low cloud, leaving much of the scenery to our imagination.


 a few hours in we reach the fishing village of Nedd with its eccentric road sign warning of pigs piglets sheep and dogs as you enter. Cute!, passing into this ancient village you see all the existing houses mixed in with the ruins of their predecessors and the odd gypsy caravan!. Leaving this quaint place in the mist I catch a sniff of garlic in the air, further along I find some wild ramsons and grab a handful for a light breakfast :-).
Over the hill to Drumbeg where the provisioning shop is, we find it closed for today..... Arse! Since we're all running low on food this could be a problem! So deciding to eat what we can we find the only shelter available to be the public toilets! Alfie enjoyed being held under the handryer for a bit lol!.
Continuing in the low cloud we head west to clashnessie picking up some eggs enroute, Entering Clashnessie we follow the single track road cut into the cliff....------------>
The bay has a lovely beach and very popular on a sunny day I imagine, for us it was a spot to boil up some of the eggs and make sandwiches and for Alfie an off lead opportunity!

WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

The road out takes us across the neck of the Stoer peninsular to Stoer itself, a nice Crofters village with another nice beach through its neighbour Clachtolle and on to where a footpath runs along a stream to a ruin of a mill (pic), the grinding wheels still lay abandoned in the vicinity. The path continues to Achmelvich and is extremely dog unfriendly campsite!


We forgave them this as they filled out water bottles and sold us excellent fish and chips which we shared with the gulls. Probably a rule against this to ;-).
Moving on with filled stomachs and a food shortage averted we head into the hills north of Lochinver passing an ancient watermill for a wild camp and naturally more swarms of midges! This must be high season for the little b@5t£rds!.(isnt yet!)
Still once again the view more than made up for it!!!

View from our wild camp to Mount Suilven!

                                                 

Day 5 20/6/2013 The A-B of roads

Away from Scourie bright and early for a full day of road walking starting with a quiet A Road that wended it's way through more of the rocky/lumpy post glacial landscape, passing Badcall bay where last night's salmon could have been landed from the Duart fisheries. a quick rest stop then continuing along the road we miss the track which would have given us an off road section,cant get everything right! so continuing on the road through Duartmore forest and then on to a viewpoint of the impressive mountains around Kylesku. here the award winning bridge crosses the sea loch via a small island. commemorated here was the incredibly heroic missions of British submariners from the second world war who piloted two man sub's into German harbours to sabotage the enemy fleet, far too many didnt make it back.

submariners cairn click to enlarge!

 The hotel at Kylesku warmly invited alfie in even knowing his breed! I had a smashing lamb pie while Ruth tucked into a bucket of muscles and John had fish cakes.
Back on the road passed Unapool and with the bulwark of Sail Garbh mountain ahead we join the B road to Drumbeg.

Swarming Midges!!!!

John heading towards Sail Garbh 

 passing the twin bulwark of Sail Ghorm with the accompanying gentle rain we follow the coast of loch a chairn bhain until we find a pitch the only available flat pitch around next to Alt na Claise burn where we are inundated by millions of midges, making for an early night.