Day 12 Stornoway to Ullapool

Some people choose white water rafting, others parachute jumping or abseiling down cliffs for adrenalin trips, but His Lordship and I opted for the white knuckle experience of limping home with a car whose will to forge up hills has suddenly become severely compromised.

In order to maximise the experience in daylight hours we arrived at the ferry terminal at Ullapool before even the birds were awake, so that we could be first in the queue for a standby place on the early boat at 7 am rather than the one we had booked at 2pm.
Our dawn start payed off and we were the last car allowed on.

Thereafter in glorious sun and heat, our luck held and we made it home, albeit more slowly than normal. We benefited from the newly installed giant cameras placed strategically down the A9 from Inverness to Perth to catch anyone doing more than 50 miles an hour. This meant long convoys of cars and prevented us holding anyone up on the single carriageway stretches.

We even relaxed enough to notice how much snow still lay in the corries of mountains from the Cairngorms and Monaliadths to those over in the Loch Rannoch area, and with our confidence growing with every passing mile and hill, by the time we arrived back at the Dower House we were almost hysterical with relief.

We have enjoyed our Hebridean Odyssey enormously and I have very mixed emotions at being back in city life again. I love the island mentality, HL probably not so much, but he has willingly subscribed to a holiday in Orkney next month, an island he has begun to appreciate more and more, especially for the cycling.