Oakwood

We spent the morning wandering about on Ardnamurchan point, at the lighthouse, with beautiful weather and fabulous views in all directions. It's as far west as one can travel on the mainland of the island of Britain, apparently - I was looking west across the ocean and wondering if the next landfall would be BigHill's way, but after consulting a map discovered that we were quite a bit further north, on a similar latitude to the Inuit in Labrador.

In the afternoon we moved inland a bit and went for a hike around a nature reserve in the oakwoods. Although it was an RSPB reserve we saw very few birds but butterflies in huge numbers.The wood is one of the surviving remnants of the ancient temperate Atlantic oak forest which apparently used to clothe the western edge of Europe all the way down to Portugal.

This oak tree had fallen over some time ago, long enough for a substantial rowan tree to be established on its root ball - but enough of the roots must have still been in the ground to allow the oak itself to continue in vigorous leaf, albeit horizontally.

On the way back to the hotel we went down to visit the castle to see how things were progressing. A lot of scaffolding had gone up around it since I last saw a photo, including on the interior of the house, so I was permitted to ascend the interior after donning a hard hat. It was a bit vertiginous, but fantastic views from the top - must have been a great place to live in the intervals between raiding parties.