Bunting

It's just as well we didn't know what was in store for us on our journey up to Helmsdale yesterday en route for Scrabster.

We had heard at 7am that the A9, the main trunk route north from Edinburgh to Inverness, was closed at Blair Atholl because of an accident, but with the optimism of the innocents, we had thought it would have been cleared by the time we got up that far.
Wrong.
Then we thought we would be clever and jinx along Loch Tummel to Tummel Bridge and cut over the hill to Trinafour and access the A9 at Dalnacarroch. However we got so far and a van driver coming the other way said that that route was closed too
There was nothing for it but to back track to Tummel bridge and head south to Kenmore and Killin before turning north to Crianlarich, Tyndrum, Glencoe and Fort William.

A sandwich lunch outside in the sunshine there, fortified us enough to continue up Loch Ness to Inverness and onward to Helmsdale.

10 hours en route.
On the plus side if there was one, was that the countryside was looking at its most beautiful.
The sun shone, the lochs were deep blue and still, with the forests reflected perfectly in the waters, the mountains were patterned in shadows, and even gloomy Glencoe was transformed into a pass of beauty; no awful place for a massacre today.
There were no fields of rape to add colour to the scene, but the bright yellow of the omnipresent gorse and broom accompanied us all the way north.

But all was forgotten with a lovely dinner and a comfortable bed.

This morning is bathed in sunshine and I was up early to stroll about a sleepy Helmsdale before we hit the road again for the short drive to the Orkney ferry.