Lair

It was a very dull damp day yet mild for the time of year.
We took Caley for a new walk, up a track from Inverlair. Inverlair holds a place in history for being a detention point for Rudolf Hess after he arrived on this soil at the end of the second world war.
Our walk took us past Intake 1, on the Alcan hydro scheme. Intake 1 captures water from the Lair burn and decants it into the tunnel below; the main tunnel running 15 miles through the mountains from Loch Treig to the Fort William smelter. I have taken accurate survey measurements in this area previously and I know that the tunnel is some 300 feet underground at this point. The structure on the burn is very modest; a wee dam with a walk way above and a metal screen at one side defending the intake from debris. It belies the scale of engineering which is out of sight. The water travels a few yards after this and then tumbles down the 300 feet drop. At this chainage** we are miles from the nearest adit and it is my understanding that this shaft was used as an access point to excavating on the tunnel faces.
We continued west and joined the route of the puggy line (a narrow gauge railway built to aid construction and servicing of the scheme). It has been lifted now but it ran from Treig to the end of the BA pier on Loch Linnhe. Mrs Cakes and I had an appetite for a few more miles (and Caley certainly had) but we needed to get back. There was drizzle and a breeze but we actually got back to the car just as the rain came on more seriously.
Mrs Cakes got a cracking picture of the yellow boy but my messing about with tripod and DSLR to get a nice landscape shot resulted in an accumulation of drizzle on the front filter. Fearing this I took a quick back up shot with the compact and that is what I used.
This is a bit of remaining puggy line sleeper debris to the right and the valley of the Lair burn beyond.
** Chainage; a term I use all the time at work. It relates to the centre line distance along any engineering alignment, a road, railway or tunnel. It stems from land measurements originally being taken by chains. (I did this only at college) Also a surveyors assistant is still called a "Chainman" although he/she is more likely to be working with lasers and scientific quality GPS receivers.