Loch Eilt

This is Loch Eilt viewed from the hillside on the north side of the valley. Our work here continued on from yesterday but we had to climb higher this time and this was unfortunate as it was even warmer today. I actually like walking in the hills with a light day sack but our survey kit is dreadfully heavy and we never got quite high enough to get in to cooler mountain air.
The road you see is the A830 trunk route running between Fort William and Mallaig. Until recent roadworks improved the alignment near Arisaig this was one of the last trunk roads in Scotland which had single track sections with passing places. The hill side scar on the other side of the loch is the West Highland Line which runs generally parallel with the road. Railway engineering design constraints are very restrictive; trains can't turn sharp corners or deal with large gradients. When you pit these constraints against this landscape the engineers have had to come up with spectacular solutions. Some one may correct me but I think there are about a dozen tunnels on this line and a couple of spectacular viaducts which includes the now very famous "Harry Potter" viaduct at Glenfinnan. In light of such engineering feats perhaps I shouldn't grumble too much about our two day topo survey carried out easily by laser and RTK GPS.