Bonus

One of the amazing bonuses of being here is that we are only a day trip away from one of our happy places, Assynt. An early start to get on the roads before the day trippers and the campervans reaped benefits. We were driving along the side of Loch Assynt in great morning light before 9am (see extra of trees). At that stage, the bigger mountains were still wearing substantial cloud hats, but by the time I took this blip, around 10am, these had largely burned off (here on the Quinag ridge), and it turned into a corker of a day (although it clouded over before we got back to the cottage). 17 degrees in Assynt at Easter. No one is going to argue with that.

We did the River Inver/Glen Canisp circuit (of indeterminate length: the sign says 6km, Walkhighlands says 7km, and Mr A’s track logger said 8km), heading up the river, which was running nicely (see extra), before heading over the hill to get a view of Suilven (see extra) and then down to Loch Canisp and back. The only slight negative sides of a 5 star walk were a 2-3 km plod back down the road to Lochinver at the end, and the collection of a few travelling ticks. I think we’ve found them all before they had a chance to do any damage. I spotted the ones that landed on my bare forearms and managed to get them off before they took root. Mr A had three behind his right knee, but they were still on the surface when we showered on returning home and they too are gone. They are pests.

After the walk, there was a trip to the pie shop - I mean that alone would have been reason enough to visit Lochinver. We had hot takeaway pies in the car overlooking the sea, and we’ve brought some back to the cottage to consume tomorrow (I guess). That really is an amazing place. We were lucky that we got there early. As we left Lochinver at 1pm, there was a proper (pandemic-style) queue starting to form outside the pie shop.

The final extra is Arkle (I think) taken when we had a pitstop for water and cereal bars on the way back (via Lairg…wouldn’t recommend that route for the future, as it got pretty boring later on and seemed to go on and on and on).

We also picked up a bottle of wine, and we are enjoying our first tipple for more than a week. The owners of the cottage have dropped off clean linen and towels, so we are all set to go for another week. The idea of a ‘rest and recharge’ is working really well.