As we were preparing to leave Lomond Woods Holiday Park this morning another camper in a motorhome pulled up behind us as I was topping up our water. As I finished and pulled away he followed us and knocked on the door to tell us our offside brake light wasn’t working. And there we were thinking we’d fixed it. I spent ten minutes fiddling about with the bulb in the fog light as that had previously been the source of the problem but this time it made no difference. Consequently we are now driving around with only one brake light and hoping for the best.
We headed north along the western side of Loch Lomond on the A82. After the previous days unbroken sunshine todays weather was grey and overcast as we drove north towards Glencoe. Along the way I saw a sign for Glen Orchy and remembered I’d read an article in a photography magazine which suggested there might be a choice of waterfalls there. On a whim I decided to take the left turn only to find we were on a single track road with occasional passing places. I drove for three miles passing falling water in various places, non of which were accessible for photography, so on this tiny narrow road I did a 25 point turn and we made our way back to the A82. Further on we reached the turn off for The waterfall at Glen Etive where I had been a couple of weeks ago. I don’t really know why I felt the need to go back to a spot I’d already photographed because I don’t think it likely that I could improve on the first one. As it turned out there was no available parking so we didn’t stop there anyway. I did carry on down the road though and soon we saw the scene below. The sun had broken through the quite dramatic clouds and lit up the distant mountain at the end of the valley. I’ve tried to use the road as well as the river as lead in lines by way of following rules of composition.
Afterwards we carried on towards Fort William. Once again we drove through Fort William and just carried on going because at least on the main road there didn’t seem to be much to bother stopping for. I can only imagine that’s partly to do with being well out of season. We decided to find somewhere to stay the night and made our way eventually to Old Inverlochy Castle. Finding it wasn’t straight forward though as there is also a ‘new’ Inverlochy Castle which is actually a hotel and we almost drove into their car park. However, I realised that something wasn’t right though as Old Inverlochy Castle was meant to be a ruin! Once again the Ipad came out and we drove to the correct destination by following our blue dot in Google Maps. The layby was exactly as described on the park4night app and we parked ready for the night. After cheese on toast and a cup of tea we realised there was no satellite reception. Obviously the fact that we were surounded by trees was blocking the signal. The prospect of Lynne and I sharing a long dark evening in the middle of nowhere with no TV wasn’t appealing so after a quick walk round the castle and a few photographs we went to plan B. Not far up the road was a large piece of flat wasteland also on the park4night app and we made our way there expecting to see other motorhomes and HGV’s parked. We arrived and saw there were no other people parked there but there were no signs forbidding overnight parking so we settled down for the night. There’s a Police station right next to this large empty car park so at least it should be safe.
Wandering Wildman 