Last nights overnight spot proved to be a noisy one. Ady was convinced the lorries were beeping as they drove past us from 5am onwards in a deliberate attempt to wake us, I am not so sure…
Once everyone was up we walked along to watch the seals for a while. They were quite active and even Kirsty would have been impressed 😉
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Our plan for the day was Dingwall town centre for some charity shop searching for jeans for me, then top up of petrol from Tescos and then a visit to Tollies Red Kites which I had spotted a leaflet for ages ago and marked as somewhere worth visiting if we were in the area.
Popmaster in the van and then off to Dingwall where we parked easily and had success in the fifth and final charity shop getting me two pairs of jeans for just £1.50 each. The labels in one had been cut out so no idea what size they were but the other clearly is mislabelled as it says 14 and despite weight loss there is no way I am that small and have not been since I was about 19! We picked up a few kids books too at bargain prices which we’ll drop back off at charity shops after we’ve read them. The kindle is not cheap for kids books so we tend to stick to charity shops for them really.
Tesco for petrol and then on our way to Tollies. The website gives slightly cloak and dagger feel directions which I had copied down and we managed to find it, at the end of a very long and bumpy track. It said feeding time is 130pm in the winter and 230pm in the summer. I was assuming it would be winter but decided we should get there early just in case so we arrived just after 1pm. There was a youngish woman in there who was very chatty but clearly just a visitor too so after a bit of looking around the room, which is beautifully done out with various information boards, art and things to look at we retreated to the car park to have lunch in Willow. We’d parked looking out over a field and spent our lunch break watching about 4 kites swooping about, landing and being all beautiful. Infact we had a better view while we ate than we did later at feeding time.
Just before 230pm we went back in the centre and were joined by a wildlife photographer who recognised us from Chanonry Point 🙂 He looked quite familiar to me but I never really talked to anyone there, I’m sure Marcus would have recognised him! We talked about dolphins for a bit and he told us about the kites and then the rangers arrived to feed them. They put out carrion – venison and rabbit – onto a table and retreat. Apparently there are more and more kites later in the year and last winter there were sometimes 20 or 30 coming to feed all at once which would be a magnificent sight. Today only a couple were around and they were pretty shy about coming to the table, only really swooping down to see off a crow that chanced it’s luck.
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It was really cold and we were conscious of finding somewhere to sleep tonight so we headed off after half an hour or so. The plan was to head towards Skye and stop when we found somewhere nice. We ended up getting all the way to Loch Alsh and have stopped within sight of the Skye bridge. Our first real glimpse of Skye 🙂
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We felt freer and happier the further away from Inverness and built up areas we got and this is all helping to cement for us that we are making the right decisions in wanting to stay up here somewhere more remote. We’re looking forward to the next three weeks exploring properly and seeing how we feel we might fit in up here.