We woke up this morning to an ever increasingly gorgeous view as the early morning mists cleared. We had breakfast and hung on in the van for Popmaster before driving back a couple of laybys to the carpark for Corrieshalloch Gorge. It’s a National Trust place and doesn’t have an admission charge as such but does have a suggested donation of £2 per person for parking. We thought £2 for all of us was fair given no one else seemed to have paid at all (you got a pay and display sticker and no one else was displaying them).
There was a longer walk taking you across the gorge or a quicker route straight to the bridge. We went for the longer one. It was such a gorgeously hot day we were all in T shirts and still hot.
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We enjoyed walking along in the sunshine looking at the stone stacks that were everywhere and adding to a couple of them. The gorge was a riot of colour with a load of pine trees giving a deep green colour (and lovely pine scent too) and the rest of the deciduous trees all turning their autumn colours. The gorge is truly impressive and the bridge crossing it is very cool. Scarlett doesn’t like bridges, particularly ones with open sides, gaps in the slats or ones that move about so this ticked all her Not Like boxes. As such I was really proud of her for crossing it there and back, and for plucking up the courage to come onto the viewing platform too 🙂 Brave girl.
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Davies and I loved the bridge, particularly when we realised we could sway it even more by rocking about on it, so we entertained ourselves with that for a while until it freaked Ady out too much (he wouldn’t get on but was standing on the sidelines looking pale!) 😆
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The walk was slightly quicker than we’d expected so we were back on the road again well before lunch. The initial plan today was to not travel very far and maybe even stay in the same overnight spot again, but we did need to find a toilet to empty our loo which was almost full, and stock up on water supplies, so decided to drive until we’d found one and then find an overnight spot.
This took rather longer than expected so we stopped for lunch at a very beautiful spot overlooking a rocky beach. The kids were looking down with narrowed eyes and then grabbed their binoculars and exclaimed that there were seals down there. Sure enough there were loads of them, all basking in the sunshine on the rocks and sometimes flopping back into the water and splashing about. It was very pretty 🙂
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We had lunch and then moved on again still looking for a loo. Finally we came across one and got the toilet emptied and the waters filled. There was no hot water so I didn’t wash my hair which I was hoping to do but not quite desperate enough to do in cold water just yet – maybe by tomorrow…
Once that was done we were ready to look for an overnight stop and soon found one – a gorgeous spot with panoramic mountains, islands and the sea. The kids were desperate for some running around time so they went off and played in the field next to the parking spot for about an hour while Ady and I planned the next few days of our journey and made pizza dough.
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While we were sitting waiting for dinner to cook a young guy walked up the hill next to us and stopped to pitch his tent. Ady nipped over to offer help and was asked if by any chance we had a spare tent peg. As it happens we do so Ady gave him a couple and lent him our mallet as he was banging his in with a stone (travelling light, I guess there are always stones around so no need to carry a mallet!) so we have a neighbour :).
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At one point I glanced out of the window and just where the kids had been playing earlier was a big stag being all majestic ;). We watched him for ages, trying (and mostly failing) to get pictures, admired him leaping the fence with ease and then trot off into the sunset. Very cool :).
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No mifi signal again so no photos yet, but fingers crossed again for tomorrow 🙂
M really was very nervous crossing that bridge then my brother waited until he was half way across before jumping violently up and down on it. Swine. (cruel though we are, we did laugh (except M))
Comment by Michelle — 30 September 2011 @ 10:31 am