The view towards Quiraing

The advantage of staying in self catering accommodation is that you can have something to eat before you head out the door at 5.30am. Something small as I cannot eat breakfast that early, so a small bowl of oats with oat milk did it for me. 

I needed that as this morning we hiked up the mountain opposite the Quiraing. Goodness me, I thought I had inadvertently joined the Marines as it was a 1 hour steep hike up the mountain in the dark before sunrise, at a temperature of 0C and so suitably warmly dressed, with a fully loaded 12 kg camera backpack on my back and carrying a 3kg tripod. It was challenging with all that extra weight. The ground was frosty and icy but at least it wasn’t muddy.  We climbed up to get the view looking onto Quiraing as the sun was lighting the side of the mountain. This is that view as the sunrise reflected it's warm glow onto the side of the mountain.

We got down at about 10.30am and were going to go out for brunch but got distracted with other things to photograph. Eventually it was midday and we decided to find somewhere to eat lunch in Portree. Most places were shut or looked rather dire, but then we found the Cuillin Hills hotel, overlooking the Cuillin mountains and the water. We had an excellent lunch (sea bream for me, roast beef for the guys) and it was far nicer than we expected. 

After lunch we headed to Neist Point to do some more photography until sunset. While it is wonderful to have sunshine and blue skies it’s not great for photography, we need some clouds! It is a long walk down from the car park to the front of the lighthouse, and then we still walked over all the rocks until the edge of the sea. The extra of the lighthouse was taken from there. The walk back was all uphill, up and up countless stairs and a steep path. No wonder I did 19,400 steps today! We got back to the cottage just before 7pm and then Guy cooked supper for us, but we all tidied up afterwards.

Tomorrow is a very early start at 4am as we want to go all the way back to Neist Point to photograph the moonset over the lighthouse. As there are no clouds and just bright sunny skies, Guy our photo leader does not want to photograph the sunrise as 'it's just a yellow blob in the sky and uninteresting without clouds!' He is quite right of course, the sun coming up does not automatically make a good sunrise. And now there is an aurora alert so we may be woken up in the middle of the night to drive 45 minutes away to photograph the aurora in a suitable setting....I have never been excited about the aurora and am even less so when I think about how little sleep I will get because of it!

Sorry but I have absolutely no time for journals at the moment.