North West Scottish Highlands
We were intending to go up An Teallach on Thursday, which is a Trail 100 hill incorporating 2 Munros. However, as we were about to get our boots on at the start point, Claire noticed that her sunburnt feet were not just red, but all swollen up as well. After a quick discussion we decided that squeezing them into walking boots was probably not a very good idea, so abandoned the walk.
It was already 12 noon by then, a bit late you may think for planning to start a big walk, but it doesn't seem to get dark properly here at all, and even at 10pm it's still daylight, so we'd intended to walk into the evening.
We drove south round the scenic coast road and stopped off at Gruinard Bay, where there was a huge deserted beach. We paddled along the shore and back for an hour, in the hope of the freezing sea water helping to calm Claire's feet down. The only problem was, the water wasn't anywhere near as cold as at the previous day's beach, in fact it was quite pleasant. If the sea hadn't been so choppy then we may even have risked a swim.
On the way back up to the van we spotted two deer on the beach, apparently snacking on dried seaweed. I don't know if they had any prawn toast with it but they seemed to be enjoying it. They were too far away to get any photos.
We had lunch, and then spent ages finding a suitable overnight spot. There seemed to be camper vans and motorhomes everywhere, and we wanted somewhere where there was no room for a second van. We eventually settled on a nice but rather windy spot near a little place called Cove alongside Loch Ewe. In keeping with its name, there were sheep and lambs everywhere.
We had a lazy evening watching downloaded episodes of Marcella on my iPad, linked up to my portable speaker which all worked quite well. I got a bit freaked out when I nipped out for a wee in the night and kept thinking about the murderer in Marcella sneaking up behind me and putting a bag over my head.
The weather forecast for Friday was bad, predicting rain and low cloud. We'd spotted a swimming pool in Poolewe, so we thought we'd go for a swim there in the morning. But we woke up to lovely sunny weather and decided it was too nice to be inside. Claire's feet were still not back to normal so a walk was out of the question, so we decided to go to another beach, this time taking more care of Claire's feet.
We stopped off in a little village on the way, where a made an alarming discovery whilst sitting on the toilet. I had a tick attached to my thigh! Ticks are horrible little bloodsucking insects that normally thrive around sheep and deer. Consequently, there are a lot of them in Scotland as well as other sheepy places like Wales and the Lake District. However, prior to today I had managed to avoid becoming a victim.
We hotfooted it back to George, where Claire gleefully got her special, never used before, tick removing tweezers out of her first aid kit. She managed to get the whole tick out in one piece, and we were just inspecting it on a piece of kitchen roll when it started wandering off! We quickly wrapped it up and put it in the bin with our croissant wrappers and popcorn bags. Fortunately I don't think it had drunk much of my blood as it was still quite small and I didn't feel faint.
You will be pleased to hear that the photo I took was too blurry to bother adding,and I've decided not to post a file image from the internet because they're too horrible.
We were uncertain about what to do, as both my parents have been bitten by ticks in the past, with dad getting quite ill and having to be treated for Lymes disease. I'm sure mum took some precautionary antibiotics when she was bitten. Consequently, I was somewhat paranoid. After some Googling and discussing, we took the recommendation of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention that we just need to monitor the bite site and go to the doctor if I get a rash or fever over the next few weeks. I fully expect stronger advice from The Parents.
It didn't take us long to get to the beach at Gairloch, and I suggested to Claire that we had another go at sea swimming as it was such a nice day. I talked her out of going to check the water temperature first, and we both put our wetsuits on, with neoprene socks over Claire's sunburnt feet too. Unfortunately we forgot to get any photos so I have found one on the internet instead.
The sea was sparkling and blue with hardly any waves or swell. It was also considerably colder than yesterday. However, having struggled into our wetsuits we were determined to at least go into the water.
After about 10 minutes of acclimatisation (a.k.a. screaming every time a bit of water breached the wetsuit seal), we managed to get some swimming done. Surprisingly, I was much braver than Claire, and managed 1,000m on and off, of proper, head in, front crawl. I had my triathlon goggles on so had a good view under the water, where I spotted a number of big pink jellyfish. Once I'd got used to it, it didn't seem so cold and I feel a lot better about the Pembrokeshire triathlon now. We managed to avoid getting stung by any of the jellyfish (the midges and ticks are enough!) and after about 40 minutes in the water we headed back to the van for lunch.
We stopped by a freshwater loch, washed all the salt water off our swimming stuff, then had lunch. Then I had a 2 hour "nap", and then we found a spot for the night, which is the best of the trip so far. We're right on the sea shore about a mile out of Torridon. There's stunning views across the loch, no room for any other vans, and the breeze is keeping the midges away. And to top it off, there have been two otters frolicking in the sea outside the van!
The forecast for the weekend is excellent and Claire's feet are sufficiently recovered to put her boots back on, so we're hoping to get some hills ticked off.
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