La Mode Balle

Salon du Thé

Hmm. Why when I upload from a phone does it remove all the phone-based edits I am so ashamed of but nevertheless want to keep….?

Saint Malo.

Grantchester Sunday

Nice walk in the easter sun!

I haven’t had as nice a walk in this in a long time. Radio 3 in the ears. Long lens. Nowhere to be. Random bat. Glorious.

Bronze

Very little of interest here except…. I keep coming back to it. (Soap bubbles in the washing up, FYI).

Skye - Day 5

Nope.

Skye - Day 4

Sorry to bang on, but this is just another of those miles of mountains I keep driving past.

Leathad na Steiseig. But could me any one of a million peaks…

Trying to allow a little serendipity into my life; because I suck the joy out of everything with my logistic anxieties.

Eilean Nan Each

BANG! Serendipity! Eilean Nan Each. An island spotted next to a church with a handy car park.

Eilean Nan Each

Drove round the loop road through Ord. It was indeed gorgeous, but I grew more interested in the animals than the overwhelming landscape wows.

Sheep at Òb Ghabhsgabhaig. A real place.

Cow in the woods near Tokavaig

I just liked this guy. After a lunch of a large salad in order to stave off the worse of the effects of Scottish* cuisine, I decided to brave the tourist trap of the Fairy Pools. Quite nice…

Fairy Pools least significant waterfall

… except ten minutes further up the road and after a significantly easier walk, you find the tallest waterfall on Skye - and you get it to yourself.

Eas Môr

I don’t know how to take photos of waterfalls and convey the scale. I think it is impossible. Without a banana.

Lastly, I indulged my creative bent and took this image of Sgurr nan Gobhar.

Sgurr nan Gobhar

Easily my favourite picture from the day. Royston Photographic Society will not be surprised.

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*my

Skye - Day 3

Absolute white-out this morning. Braved the snow and wind for a walk.

Scotland

After breakfast the snow had mostly stopped and so I braved the icy peaks of the Storr to visit the Old Man.

The Old Man of Storr

Needle Rock | Old Man of Storr

Loch Leathan | Isle of Raasay | Wester Ross

And then… and THEN!…. Rubha Hunish. The northernmost tip of Skye - a small low promontory below enormous basalt cliffs. An absolute treat and worth the five-mile hike and precipitous climb down.

Precipitous climb down

Rubha Hunish

Rubha Hunish

Rubha Hunish Coastguard

Skye - Day 2

Really cold and wet. Bah.

Loch Fada

Bride’s Veil Falls

It was so wet and cold this morning that all I managed was to gather these three things from The Braes. If you mix them in Doodle God you get Skye.

Skye - Day 1

First place I went to once actually on Skye… and it was closed for construction work. However it was Sunday so I jumped the fence. Impossible to take pictures of this with my expensive camera and lenses so this was a drone. I have a feeling this will be a pattern.

And then on to Quiraing, a collection of features in the Trotternish Ridge escarpment. It was early, it was dark, it’s miles down a very dodgy track, I was the only one there, and the weather was closing in. So I took a couple of pics and chickened out back to the car with snow in my boots.

The Needle

The Needle. What a scary climb up to this in the snow…. Just behind it is the Prison and just behind me is the Table, but bugger them; all I could think of was sliding to my death. Hopefully I can come back later in the week if the weather improves.

Dawn over the north-east coast

After Quiraing, piss-wet through and freezing I went home to dry my clothes and have lunch to find - a two-hour island-wide power cut. Sat in front of the fire eating a cheese sandwich.

Dunvegan Castle

Early evening and I drove an hour to take this picture with the wrong lens, in the wrong weather and with the wrong amount of enthusiasm. I imagine in a dusky summer sun it looks fab. For a castle. Castles are boring. The walk wasn’t though…. My guide-book said “Go through the gate next to the road sign to Claigan” which was a euphemism for “Climb over the locked and barbed-wire-topped gate with the sign saying Beware Of The Bull” (and then over two more fences.) Wasn’t worth it.

Neist Point

Notable according to my guide (post-bridge) as the furthest west part of the UK you can drive to, which rather depends on where you start. Bloody London metropolitan elites…! Another drone-shot. What did I say…?