Just over two weeks ago Mr J, Moss
& I headed north in Brian
.
This is Brian on North Uist!
I suspect that you will need to remember Brian the Snail in the Magic Roundabout to understand how a truck camper, a 'demountable', got to be called Brian!
We spent two weeks away..... we ambled to the Western Highlands, Skye (this is near Stein in North Skye)
The picture above is the Cullin mountains from Elgol on Skye. The long ride down to Elgol from Broadford was worth the stunning views, both into the Cullins & across to Rhum & Eigg.We then sailed to the Uists. I can't really image a trip to Scotland without a ferry & islands involved. They have a magic that I cannot really describe, only mutter words like 'light'... 'space' 'colours'.....& offer up some of our photographs!
We then came back via the long way round, stopping in the Cairngorms, Aberdeenshire, Fife & Northumberland! I had to don waterproofs just once 'in anger' & whilst our tan owes more to the wind than the sun we had a fantastic, fairly lazy time.
We camped in some amazing places & enjoyed the fantastic, ever changing light & scenery.
This was taken on North Uist. As you can see Brian was tucked away & on his own at the end of a 'beach access' track. When we got back to Skye we were told that there had been an article in the local paper complaining about camper vans in the Outer Hebrides. We saw nothing of the
invasion of camper vans reported in the Western Highland Free Press & depicted thus:
& suggesting that they were 'ruining' the machair & making no contribution to the economy of the islands. Infact the most campers we saw in one place on either North or South Uist was two & so we moved on! This was in a week when the ferries were pretty full! There is just one -official campsite' on the the Uists. Its by the road side & school in Benbecula. Its a decent
campsite but its location isn't great & its always over full. The camper vans we saw were tucked away, were not damaging farm land & more often were in the carpark of one of the Co-op shops! The newspaper article quotes how this camper van owners spend nothing when they are there, but the people quoted it turns out were a 'businessman' and a 'hotelier'! We went ( 7th year running) we paid out for ferry fares, spent money in the shops & took nothing but memories & photos! Fairly typical I guess! OK, soapbox bit over. Just fairly typical of the media I guess, but it irritated me!
So, some more pictures: The wind blew fairly hard - Force 6-7 for the five days we were out on the Uists, giving some fairly messed up water!
There will be ALOT of photos like this appearing in a classroom near here in September! Call this post part one! I need to organise some more of the....600+ photos.... & blogger is driving me nuts trying to get them into the right place!
....don't worry, there was quite alot of knitting done!
6 comments:
What lovely pictures - especially the seascapes.
Oh fabulous pics, we didn't see much of the views on this years trip earlier this year due to the bad weather. The first time in ten years we had such bad weather but we went up earlier than usual :(
Re the issue about camper vans I do know that in the last few years there are far more vans about than when we first started , so maybe, like up were we live, they are far more obvious these days? !!! Also wild camping has always been accepted and even engouraged in parts of Scotland which is what we love but sadly they may have to change it :( Part of the travelling for us is trying out local produce etc but no we don't want hotels or B&B's. Maybe it the credit crunch making business folks feeling left out ?
Don't laugh, but I just pulled this over to show Marcus, and got a bit teary eyed at home beautiful your pictures are. I'm feeling a bit homesick realizing how far away this is from us now...
Sounds like a great trip. Missing you!
Wow -- what amazingly beautiful photos!!! i'm so glad you had a good time. We had the most wonderful holiday -- albeit very different in scenery, nonetheless beautiful in its own way. And, I couldn't believe the amount of knitting that can be accomplished in 37 hours in the car!!! wow! i completed a shawl (thanks to your recommendation I found a shawl in my sister's patterns that was almost exactly the one you recommeneded), also finished my nutkin sock and two sweet Susan B. Anderson baby hats! Otherwise, knitting did not happen on the beach -- not with 4 kids. :)
Oh, bother. Now I not only need another holiday, I'm reminded of a place I've always intended to visit :-) Lovely photos, and it sounds as though they're mementos of a lovely holiday.
Wonderful photos. It sounds as though you had a really good time. The photos you have taken are amazing. The shot of the sea breaking onto the rocks is stunning.
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