1 EAGLETON NOTES: From Stornoway to Ullapool

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Thursday 3 June 2010

From Stornoway to Ullapool

That’s Stornoway in the distance at about 0800 on Tuesday.  You can’t see it?  Must be the heat haze.  Who am I trying to kid?  It was a dull, overcast morning and although it had not been completely dark all night (it is, after all only 3 weeks to the longest day) the morning was not the brightest.  So I didn’t think that photography was really going to be part of my morning.  However my desire for some blog material overcame my reluctance to leave the comfort of the cafeteria. For 35 years I have eschewed the comfortable reclining seats in the lounges in favour of sitting at a table in the cafeteria and using the laptop or doing my crossword or reading or, in the days when I travelled on business, working on whatever it was I was going to do on the mainland.

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As we neared the entrance to Loch Broom on the Scottish mainland the islands in the entrance to the loch and the hills and mountains of Sutherland started to become prominent:

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As we sailed down Loch Broom the communities on the Northern shoreline between the sea and the inhospitable and uninhabitable hills came into view.  These communities have developed beyond recognition as people have sought to ‘get away from it all’ and live there.  When I first lived on Lewis and sailed down this Loch 35 years ago the scene was very different and there were certainly very few large houses; the great majority being croft houses with a few bed and breakfast businesses.  Now a remarkably large number of the houses are large and splendid edifices.

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Suddenly in the near distance (can one have near distance?) appeared Ullapool, the ferry’s destination:

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3 comments:

  1. It's a beautiful landscape (or should I say seascape) but it really does seem rather "away from it all"...

    I got curious about the origin of the name Ullapool. Tried looking it up but no success. "Ulla" is a common Swedish/Scandinavian girl's name.

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  2. Lovely. Thank you for emerging from that cafeteria. Blogging is a good cause.

    And it gave me a little jump when you said that it doesn't get completely dark all night. That really is something I'd like to see one day.

    Here the clouds are streaked with pink just on 5pm now. It's quite pleasant to view the spectacle as I'm walking home from tech.

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  3. Don't all those houses dotted along the shore look inviting! And those mountains behind them are so beautiful, it's a shame they have their backs to them.
    Take care on the mainland!

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