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