I had a few weeks off so decided to take off around Scotland and visit all of the places and do the things that I should have done years ago.
I travelled on the West Coast rail line from Glasgow to Mallaig. Amazing scenery.
I finally got around to climbing Suilven in Sutherland. It's not a 3,000 feet munro. Just a 2,000 feet mountain. But it's remote and involves a long walk in before you can begin the climb. It took us 9 hrs in total. I'd seen the mountain years ago as a child travelling to Lochinver on holiday and always wanted to climb it.
I tried white water rafting. Beautiful scenery again with some rapids to waken you up ! Hours of going down waterfalls and generally getting a good soaking. Brilliant fun.
Oh and I went camping for a few days with my 'trail' bike. An old Kawasaki . It's not very fast but just keeps plodding on.
It was a great few weeks but was spoiled by the constant gloomy skies after some jets went over and cancelled out any chance of some blue skies.
The spraying was consistent from Lochinver in the north until my return to Dundee. It was so annoying as the jets and their trails were on most of my photographs.
Maybe they've changed the fuel mixture as we used to see small contrails from the aircraft that quickly dissipated but these trails go on for hundreds of miles and slowly spread and combine with each other until the sky is just a grey mess. I'm not surprised that there's a problem with vitamin D deficiency if the sun is never allowed to shine. It must create havoc for our farmers as well with limited sunshine shortening the growing season for their grass and crops.
Here are some photos from my trip. I'll add more later.
Sky at Tyndrum covered in trails..
Rannoch Moor sky full of trails...
Blue sky turned to a grey mess after several jets went over leaving their trails...photo near Dundee...
Aircraft spraying over the Highlands...
'Suilven' mountain near Lochinver....