Three day road trip

We went on a road trip to the north coast of Scotland. To Helmsdale and then a fantastic cross country drive to Loch Eriboll through some of the emptiest and saddest and uplifting country. Back through Tongue and Strathnaver in dropping evening sun. Today from Helmsdale via backroads and then round the north side of the Cairngorms, over the Lecht in a growing gales and to Braemar and the road to the end and a walk and Glenshee in mist and driving rain.

The north coast from Tongue to Durness was a complete revelation. The vast open spaces of the Sutherland and Caithness moors and straths a wonder. Ben Hope and Loyal. The rivers, the farms and (grr) Estates. Staggering.

Maybe a strange photo to capture it all but at the same time I was reading Anthony Beevor's last book about the Second World War - the bloody, brutal, awful fighting in the Ardennes that was Hitler's last gasp and cost the lives of so many thousands of soldiers and civilians.

The photo - taken on the fly from the moving car with The Boss at the wheel - is the silent ski lifts at Glenshee in a Scottish August. It reminded me in a completely unintended way - one of the good things of those car shots - of a Sebastiano Salgado shop of some hell on the periphery of  modernity.

The first extra is from the summit of the Lecht pass on the north east side of the Cairngorm massif with the wind howling and low cloud and rain moving in.

The last extra is out at Fort George - another site of brutal repression - on the south side of the Moray Firth looking south west to Inverness.

We must have done about 700 miles. No wonder we both feel done in. But how lucky we to escape the hands of a General Wade, a Duke of Sutherland or the crushing terror of the benignly-named 'Battle of the Bulge'.