Tuesday - oop North

At last, it's warmed up, 11⁰ when I got out of bed this morning. 

Up the N W coast today to the Port Of Ness. Like most of the island there's nothing there once you get there, but the roads are empty and the views are great.

Terrible picture but you can just make out the mainland, the reason is it stops is because that's Cape Wrath (I think) the most northerly point of the West coast of Scotland, we are a long way north

Some other random shots

Well, Port of Ness really was the end of the line, the road ran out (so many roads both here and on Skye, just went somewhere and stopped, no circular route), so retrace our steps but this time stopping at the places we passed in the way up. 

First stop the ancient church of St Moluag 

Whether it's a really old church, a Roman temple, a stone circle, whatever, there's always a spiritual sense of reverence to a place that has been held so special to so many for so long.

Anyway time for coffee, at the local community centre and museum. The meeter-greeter was a 77 year-old from Sheffield who moved to the island 22 years ago. Yes, it was one of those encounters where you spend longer chatting with the staff than viewing the exhibits! Actually there was an extremely interesting new exhibit about the local area, the bits about land ownership, crofters, the clearances, and recent legislation that has allowed communities such as this to own the land was fascinating.

Loved this loom

And if Ken from radio club is reading this I'm sure he will be reminded of a dear departed friend in the same way Liz and I were

The island's have some interesting curiosities. Honesty shops are one. This caravan had some nice gifts, a box to pay for them, a box of change should you need it and even a self-operate card machine should you not have the cash. I do hope they don't lose much stock. Liz bought a little sun-catcher just to say we had

There's a couple of standing stones around here, actually the first one they now believe might be an iron age farm. Trying to avoid a water sodden bit of the path I take a diversion and suddenly realise just what the word 'bog' means in 'peat bog'. Liz retreats back to the van but I carefully and squelchily pick my easy back to the van and in up to

Yeah, I'm not sure it was worth it either! 

To be fair, the next stone, the Trussell Stone (Clach An Truishal) is a heck of a lot more spectacular 

At 6m high it's the tallest standing stone in Scotland.