Tamarin Bed & Breakfast Ullapool

... that you could show other noblefolk your area. The local Duke went one step further and even hired a crazy old man Hermit to live in his land, so that he had something extra special to brag about! We stopped at Ossians hut, which sat just over a waterfall and watched the salmon try to jump upstream to their spawning areas.

Back on the bus - a quick lunch at the Tipsy Laird, which for those who watched Monarch of the Glen (a BBC show a few years back) was ...

... from sea level to over 2,000 feet in 5 miles. I made it to 4 miles and had to turn around :-(

It was pouring with rain and the wind was so strong I couldn't cycle forwards without falling off, I even found it difficult to push the bike into the wind up the road. As I could see the cloud cover lowering over the mountain and no sign of the wind passing, I decided to turn ...

I set off this morning looking for a group of surfers on the beach, but by the time that I got there at around 9am I guess they had realised that the waves (surf) was not all that good in Thurso and they must have moved on. I had a look for them on my way but I couldn't see them, I guess they must have gone the other way up the coast.

I set out with all good intentions of getting to SYHA Durness and stopping there for the night while ...

... phoned ahead to make sure that there
is some availability and there is. Great, my first night back in
Scotland is a SYHA Carbisdale Castle, and what a hostel this is. I arrive at the castle at 7pm and
dinner is just being served so I treat myself to a cooked dinner after my 8.5 hour drive up, I think I deserve it.

Went to the highlands. Visited St Andrews (a famous gold course which you have to book 6 month in advance to play at) as well as Glenlivet (a whisky distillery) just went for a quick walk int eh rain through the area before having dinner of Tomatoe soup, chicken and cous cous and fruit salad. Was a very pretty area. But didn't do much around the town.

... I'm 87% sure that my fellow trip-sters think i'm fit to be put in the "Loon's Reserve"...we were at the Ring of Brodgar at a particularly cold, wet, and windy moment, and I let slip the following: "I now understand megaliths and sun-god worship. I would gladly sacrifice one of you if it meant the sun would come out and stay there." Is that wrong?...honesty is the best policy, so i've been taught. Sadly, this time it was a ...

We left Edinburgh on the 17th, and took the train to Inverness, where we picked up the rental car. Lordy, if I had known how scary and difficult it would be to drive on the “wrong” side of the road, sitting on the “wrong” side of the car, shifting with your left hand, on narrow roads with many blind curves and absolutely NO shoulder ….. I’m not sure I would have done it. But, it’s good I didn’t know because we never would ...

... off the bus into the freezing cold highlands rain no less than 5 times. Last night was a doozie, though, shower-wise. My goodness... just picture a goldfish that's been coated in butter doing slidey-slide all over in its little bowl...and that's how my "tub shower" went.

On a side note, I have a hugely massive crush on our old man bus driver, Brian. For instance, I was walking up the 3 ...

... of Measach and the Inverewe Gardens, just south along the coastline. Reality strikes again: No disasters this time just plain tiredness. Our ferry didn't leave Stornoway til afternoon and we arrived in Ullapool by about 4 pm. It is our favorite town yet, again just so beautiful. The hostel here is on the main shore front road in a row of 2 story white plaster houses with dormer windows like a picture out of an ...

... and swiftly moving water of the River Ness was probably no colder than the air.

In the last of the daylight we tracked along the western edge of the 23 mile long but very narrow Loch Ness. Previously I had wondered if the monster myth had been a creative attempt to get tourists to come to an otherwise unremarkable place (a tactic similar to the creation of a ridiculously long name for a certain nondescript village in North-West Wales ...