Lochinver
is a pretty fishing village, dominated by the rounded mass of Suliven. Neil climbed it, but the girls decided to stay on lower, and very pleasant, trails around town, and check out the pubs
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The
River Inver is popular for sport fishing, with spectacular access paths to
key points, like that on the left. We cannot understand how a salmon fighting its way upstream to spawn has either the time nor the energy to bite at a hook in this torrent.
The weather improved as we headed North into Loch Inchard, near the NW corner of mainland Scotland.
We spent a few days at Kinlochbervie, in Loch Inchard, along with other boats waiting on weather to round Cape Wrath.
Good social life with OK walks around the area.
A large fishing boat with 100 tons or so of fish came in and there was an auction of the catch to waiting merchants. Immediately afterwards, people seemed to disappear and the village was again very quiet.
We met Barry Pearson, a transplanted Englishman who makes his living piloting Remotely Operated Submarines in the undersea oil industry, and by painting what he sees. He has a gallery in some old containers in Kinlochbervie, and a web site at www.thecontainergallery.co.uk
Although both Lochinver and Kinlochbervie are modern fishing ports, all the ships using them were from Eastern Scotland or other parts of Europe, none from the West Coast.
We
left Kinlochbervie for the 2 day sail to the Shetland Isles with a
good wind, blue seas and sunshine.Enroute we passed the remote and snow covered Sula Stack, a dangerous rock sticking up from deep water well off the coast.
Stefan Bleekrode, a Dutch artist cycling around Europe hitched a ride with us to Norway. He has some interesting work at www.stefanbleekrode.com
As we left the Shetlands for Norway, we passed the great cliffs of Noss, where thousands of seabirds nest. The photo shown only the lower third of the cliff.