Glaciers, grinding West, gouged out
these valleys, rasping the brown sandstone,
and left, on the hard rock below –
the ruffled foreland –
this frieze of mountains, filed
on the blue air –
Stac Polly,
Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,
Canisp –
a frieze and
a litany.
Who owns this landscape?
Has owning anything to do with love?
For it and I have a love-affair, so nearly human..
Norman MacCaig
A Man in Assynt (excerpt)
Day 4
Today was the first morning I woke up and managed to turn over without invoking dizziness in nearly 6 weeks so I took that as a good sign.
We motored out the bay and pointed the bow towards the Skye Bridge. As we passed the ruins of a castle on a promintary at Kyleakin, I recalled visiting there three years ago with the Catalans and our dear wee grand daughter.
We’d mused about princesses and unicorns and the captain helped her climb up the walls to peep out the window. Time had flown so fast and now she was a big sister to another joy for us.
We carried on under the bridge, always a moment of breath holding as you slide through and safely out the other side, although there is plenty room and we turned to starboard and along the shoreline past Badicaul and the entrance to Loch Carron. It was windy though the low cloud hung over the Misty Isle and seemed settled there for a while. We chatted as we continued past Raasay then Rona and the visibility cleared enough to see over to Trotternish then Staffin. I contacted our youngest to see if he was guiding on Skye just to know if he were clambering along the dark brooding ridgeline of the Black Cuillin we could see way in the distance, but he was working further south on the Ben.
An interesting conversation was taking place over the VHF between a naval training base and other craft in the area. They were requesting a wide berth from their training ground. The captain had noticed earlier the depth suddenly shot up and deduced we might have sailed over a submarine!
The wind direction and strength made our decision to keep going north while we could, so we sailed past Applecross, Sheildaig and made for Badachro. I recognised little settlements as we passed, Opinan, Port Henderson then Big Sands, places from childhood and fond memories of family holidays in these enchanting places. Gairloch came into view, a place known from teenage past when I stayed with a family as an au pair to two delightful little kids while their parents did their best to renovate the old house a family member had left them. I remembered loading up the wee ones in the pram and stuffing as many bags as possible of nappies, food, toys, blankets and towels then heading to the beach to make camp for the day, only returning when I thought the DIY work was done for the day. More recent times involved the learning centre our college has there and collaboration with colleagues.
We turned deeper into the bay just as a “tender” to an enormous super yacht made it’s way past us, a deck on the back that slides further back to allow their helicopter to land then be lowered into the “garage” then roof slid back over!
Well I was content with my super yacht and felt more virtuous with our wind power driving us and solar and wind heating our water and cooking our dinners.
Stravaigin gently nosed her way into the pretty little bay that lay almost in a circular cove, houses and inns looking down on the boats all shapes and sizes swaying about on the rising tide.
I picked up a visitor mooring and we went through the usual end of passage routine of declothing, snacks, drinks and lying back admiring where we were.
I was pleasantly surprised at how far we’d come already in 4 days, it didn’t seem quite real.
We decided to load the bike bits into the dinghy and go ashore to rebuild them and suss the place out for an exploration tomorrow.
I wasn’t sure how the riding would go but will see.
A cool drink on the deck of the Badachro Inn and another horse box trailer selling woodside pizzas! We weren’t tempted though having the ultimate pizzas on demand from our youngest’s fiancé and could not be surpassed!
Back onboard we decided on venison burgers for tea and make a plan for a day onshore tomorrow as there was no wind forecast and a day exploring would be fun.
