Sunday, May 13, 2012
May 13th Scotland
We stayed in one of the lodges at Ardmair, and woke up on the first morning to snow. This soon disappeared but the weather remained cold all week. The main event was walking half of Quinag, a hill we first went up in 2005 when we walked the whole ridge - and a very fine ridge it is, too.
Where lonely Loch Assynt turns the corner, its river flowing out to Lochinver.
As we dropped to the bealach from which we would start our descent, my heart also sank; last time we'd walked here we had seen ptarmigan, but only on the northern end of the hill. As luck would have it however, a fairly vocal male ptarmigan was on the col itself, although it wasn't easy to locate him.
We began to go down, taking frequent looks back up the hill; and this is the last sighting we would have of the ptarmigan.
I had a fall walking back across the moorland, but it would be another two weeks before I finally went to the doctor and discovered that I had a fractured wrist.
On the last morning I got up early and went out for a last look around; it was cold and windy and there was very little about. Returning to the lodge I found Greger awake and reading in bed, so I took him a coffee and then scanned Loch Canaird. Two small birds were diving at the far end of the beach, and I went out to investigate. I was looking into the sun and they just looked black; but as I got nearer, picking my way between the boats' mooring ropes, I realised that they were Slavonian grebes.
Which made a nice end to the week.
// posted by Christine @ 1:01 PM 
