Yesterday Scotland bit back as it often does. Perhaps it feels the need to just remind us, after a day as good as yesterday, that it is still in charge and we should not get complacent. We awoke to driving rain and very low cloud and this continued throughout the day. Scotland is capable of throwing significant amounts of rain at you and I suppose we shouldn’t complain. After all, it is the weather here that goes a long way to forming the land into what it is that makes it so attractive to us as landscape photographers.
If any days was going to be wet, this was the best one for us as we were moving on from Glencoe up to Skye. After checking out we descended from the Kings House Hotel up on Rannoch Moor down Glencoe (stopping for a brief visit to the site of my fall last January which resulted in my broken leg and ankle. I grabbed some iPhone images but most definitely didn’t attempt to re-cross the river!). With little hope we detoured to Stalker Castle but on arrival the rain miraculously eased and blessed us with an hour or so of just the odd spate of drizzle. It was enough, coupled with a sufficiently high tide, to capture some great long exposure images of this castle which sits on its own island out in Loch Linne. A second benefit of a visit to Castle Stalker is the chance to pop in the cafe, which has nice views over the castle and serves exceedingly good cakes.
From there the rain returned and battered us all the way from the Castle to Skye. Even our stop at Eilean Donan Castle was hampered by rain. We were more than pleased to arrive at our base for the next four nights, the Sligachan Hotel which sits nestled under the mighty Cullin mountains. All this rain means the rivers and waterfalls are raging and the shooting over the next few days look interesting. The forecast is for the rain receding, temperatures dropping (with a chance of a dusting of snow on the tops of the Cullin) and some rising winds.
The next few days look interesting!