Road Trip in Scotland – Sheep on the Road

Wowww!

There are no Midges! So it’s true, they don’t like the sun.

We climb the mountain, following the sound of the water running and we end up finding the perfect place for a bath, well a sort of bath!

With our bikini, towels and our nature-friendly-soap, here we go! The water is nicely cold and refreshes our body and soul.

……………………………………..

After a lovely breakfast – picnic mode – we get back on the road with a renewed spirit. The frustations of last night are forgotten: it was a bad night, but this morning was so perfect!

And here is our plan for today:

To cross the Loch Linnhe we took a 15minutes trip on a ferry to Corran.

We followed the country road to Sanna beach. In many places the road has one single lane and every so often there are passing places for the cars coming in the opposite direction.

And now we have to stop due to the cow traffic…

Later on, we stopped again because the sheep chose the middle of the road to take a nap… and in fact they do not seem to care about the approach of our car. So Thibaud tries to touch them.. and then yes, they flee away! So we can continue our way…

Finally we arrive in Sanna: a little village in the remote west coast of Scotland, where there is only a few houses, the sheep graze freely in the dunes, the beach is deserted, the sand is white and the water is a light blue.

It’s already 2pm and we are starving! We put our beers in the water to refresh and we settle for a relaxed picnic at the beach! 🙂

4.30pm, we still have to go all the way back… it took us 1 hour to get here so another hour to go back to the main road… and this is the only way to get to and from Sanna. I guess these people spend a lot of time taking their children to and from school!

Heading north, there is a castle icon pointed on the map nearby… let’s have a look! It’s Tioram Castle (pronounced Cheerum

from Scottish Gaelic), a ruined castle built to control access to Lock Shiel.

There is no access to the interior because of the risk of falling masonry, but our curiosity crossed the limits and we made a quick visit inside… the walls look fragile indeed!

Back on the road… we still need to find a place to sleep!

We look in different beaches.. but there is too many people everywhere. The perfect place would be where we could light up a campfire and get away from the Midges. They are actually waking up again and now each stop we take we are attacked by thousands!

We drove along Loch Morar for about 15 minutes! One more stop to check the area… and there is a left over from a campfire… and some sheep are grazing around.

We look at each other waiting for a negative argument: and so far it was the best place. Let’s stay here!

While Marie was setting up the tent, me and Thibaud started looking around for the material to light up the fire. We didn’t buy anything to help in this process, therefore we only have a lighter and whatever nature can give us! We collected some dried grass.. some small wood sticks (no matter how small they were some were wet, which made it harder to burn)… and we didn’t have enough! The Midges were around us all this time so we were trying to do it as quick as possible!

The first smoke, the first flame! Yey! But, it didn’t last long…We need more and more of this dried grass, dried leaves and anything that can burn easily really! Only at the third attempt we managed to keep the campfire on! 🙂

We have reached the conclusion that it is not the making of the fire, but keeping it lit which is difficult. And yes, the Midges moved away a bit with the smoke, but they did not disappear!

 

Already starving we baked some potatoes (rolled in foil paper) and heated tomato sauce in a pan. So today we could eat something hot, finally!

The sun set slowly behind the mountains, turning the sky into pink. We stayed for another couple of hours sitting around the fire, as close as we could be, with the Midges just behind us, till the ashes cooled down and we went off to sleep