The car park for the Falls of Kirkaig is empty when we arrive with two steak pie and mashed potato dinners purchased twenty minutes earlier from Lochinver Larder but still hot. “How many other vans do you think will turn up, three, four?” I muse over our meal. Mish looks out of the window at the April showers and lowering temperature and confidently predicts “none”. Surely not, we’re in beautiful Assynt, surrounded by ancient woodland with the Kirkaig river not twenty feet from us. When I look out the window in the early hours the rain has stopped and we are alone, with just the owls, the roaring river and a billion stars twinkling in the ink black night sky to keep us company. Wives, why are they always right.
A walk to Glenashdale Falls, Isle of Arran
The Isle of Arran is often referred to as ‘Scotland in Miniature’ because the north of the island is mountainous whereas the south is more pastoral. We’ve brought the van over from Ardrossan and are enjoying a mini road trip around the island, mini because Arran is only twenty miles long and nine miles wide. But what it lacks in acreage it more than makes up for in natural scenery and human history with an abundance of beaches, waterfalls and wildlife, castles, distillery’s and ancient monuments.
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A walk to Sandwood Bay
I first read about Sandwood Bay in 1982 in that wonderful series of hardback ‘Classic Walks’ books written by Ken Wilson and Richard Gilbert. Gilbert’s description of the walk fired my imagination, “rounding the cliff, one of the most glorious sights in Britain unfolds before you. Below your feet lies Sandwood Bay, a mile long sweep of golden sand bounded by rolling dunes and crashing breakers that makes you want to shout for joy”. I too wanted to shout for joy in Sandwood Bay. Thirty Nine years later I got the opportunity.