Monday, August 10, 2020
The car park at Achnahaird was full, so I decided to give the beach a miss, parked above the chalet, and then walked up onto Cnoc Mor. From the hill-top I could see some splashing far out in Enard Bay (of which Achnahaird Bay is just a small inlet), and I made my way down across boggy ground to the cliff-tops to get a better view of what I thought were probably common dolphins.
The headland on the left is Cluas Deas.
When I got back home, I learnt from the assyntwildlife website that 100+ common dolphins had been recorded off the Bay of Stoer - so I was lucky enough to see some of that activity, albeit at a huge distance, and I now also had confirmation of my tentative ID.
I wonder what it is about distance, that brings a certain (I was going to say melancholy, but that's too passive) restlessness, or yearning; maybe it's just the wish to be somewhere else. I was first aware of it many years ago on Beinn Dearg, a hill in Torridon. The previous day we'd been up Beinn Alligin because it's a Munro, and now we climbed this one despite its loss of Munro status because we wanted to - as good a reason as any for going up a hill! But on the summit, I looked out to sea and along the coast, and saw a settlement with what looked like a yellow arc - a sandy beach? Distance lent romance to the idea; I was very happy to have just climbed a hill and be enjoying the solitude, but at the same time I suddenly longed to be in a seaside town, amid the holiday bustle. Torn in two.
Today, it was the dolphins themselves who caused my melancholy - their unreachableness, and the sense of loss as they headed back out towards the open sea.
Wandering back to the road preoccupied with such profound thoughts, I completely missed a white-tailed sea eagle catching me up and passing me - and could only grab a useless record shot as it dwindled into a speck somewhere beyond the beach.
On the road into Coigach in the morning, a lorry had gone too close to the edge in a passing place and was perched, leaning precariously, over the bank; and now as I began the journey home, a driver meeting me at a passing place stopped and informed me that recovery of the lorry was underway, so there could be a holdup. I thanked him but carried on anyway, pulling in at the cattle grid from where I took a photo across Loch Osgaig. On the right can be seen the queue of traffic building up from the opposite direction; and before long, quite a few cars and campers had passed me and were filling up the road ahead.
After about forty minutes the truck was righted and driven off, and the traffic all started moving again. This is a single-track road, and I'd guess that as many people were driving into the area as leaving it, so it all became a bit of a mess. Back on the main road, I didn't even try to park at Ardmair, as the long lay-by was full of campervans. Some have been overnighting there; presumably, when the adjacent campsite is full. I think some regulation of campervan hire companies is needed; it's madness to have so many vehicles coming into areas where there just isn't room for them all.
// posted by Christine @ 12:09 PM 
