shewhomust | Missing, believed having a good time. (Reply)

No one reason for almost a week's radio silence: but many small ones. Mostly, since I last posted, days on the road followed by evenings doing something else, or just stretching out with a book (Rose Macaulay's Dangerous Ages, since you ask). And now here we are, on the last night of our holiday, in a hotel on the campus of the University of Stirling - the sort of rather corporate hotel that at a different stage of the trip I might have greeted wih disdain, whereas now Im delighted to have a seat at a desk and a socket nearby where I can plug in if I need to!

As an aide-memoire to myself - because I hope to write about these things in more detail, and to illustrate them, too - since I last posted we have spent:

one day exploring South Walls / Longhope: highlight, the Martello tower.

one day in transit, including two ferries: first the Hoy Head, Lyness to Houton, the morning in Kirkwall (mostly at the cathedral) then to Stromness to take the Hamnavoe back to the Scottish mainland. A spectacular drive (a section of the North Coast 500) west to Bettyhill and the Farr Bay Inn.

a long drive through the fringes of the Highlands - looking very green and lush, which are not qualities I associate with those stony uplands - to Fort Augustus, back to our starting point, on the Caledonian Canal.

another long drive,which mostly followed the Great Glen, but with disappointingly few views down to the water. Includes the Photo That Got Away, the one we had passed before we could even think about stopping to catch it: rounding a bend a the foot of the descent, as the clouds cleared and the sun shone on a long expanse of loch and at its far end Ben Nevis only slightly veiled. Parked in the foreground, brilliant yellow in the sunshine, a mobile library. On the same day, ferry from Lochaline to Fishnish (I love the name Fishnish) and late afternoon explorations of Tobermory.