A new excuse :-)

Monday night, just after 21:00 and it’s been a lovely day, not the blue skied scorcher we were promised but nice nonetheless. Yesterday had me in bed at 18:30!!! so no posting last night, though I did get up at 22:30 for a bath before turning in again. I must have needed it for I slept like a log, waking up ahead of the alarm and arising full of enthusiasm but feeling like I’d been hit by a truck 😦

So after the usual ablutions, coffee and spell on here to check my emails and oil my ego I went for a walk. Determined not to pop any Tramadol I thought a wander down to Tarbert might loosen the joints and ease the pain. It didn’t work but it was pleasant trying, the wee dug and I taking the old path round the Rubh Crion and on down towards the shore.

 

Returning via the sheep fank near Rainy’s wall and back along Calum’s road.

The still low sun casting most of the bay, wall and fank in shadow the Creag Bhan’s fair top being the only thing to catch it’s glow, perhaps that’s why it’s called the ‘fair rock’ or pale rock 🙂

Eventually we abandoned our walk out of necessity and headed for work in the Land Rover at just before 7:00am, late by my standards but still in plenty of time.

 

At this point in the day it really did feel like the forecasters had got it right as I changed down to first gear and crawled up the first steep hill. It does have a name something along the lines of ‘the pass where you can see the loch and a house’, Beallach tigh na something or other but even my walking dictionary Calum Don Mackay couldn’t remember. The hill however is the ‘Hill of the hind’ but there’s little chance of me remembering the Gaelic for that 🙂

Still, after twenty three years I still enjoy crawling up the hills 🙂

There’s such a sense of achievement every time you get to the top 🙂

I mentioned it in the last post https://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/southerly-wind-northerly-swell/ but here it is in the flesh. The ‘Golden cliff’, not as golden as it can be on an autumn or spring morning but impressive all the same. The sandstone cliff below Ben Tianavaig, home to sea eagles and a spot where Willie Eyre and myself would often fish for scallops, the underwater scenery being just as spectacular as the mountain itself 🙂 Not that Willie ever got his feet wet, he just studied the echo sounder, plotter, tide tables and used his nose then told me where to go 🙂

The old almshouses at Manitoba was my next stop before a full day at work. A day that was mainly ‘month end’ routine and a little painting.

A yacht had chosen a nice sheltered place to spend the night away from the northerly swell and Molly and I headed home.

Though if we’d have made it a few minutes sooner we might have caught some better pictures of the Portree lifeboat ‘Stanley Watson Barker’ out on exercise in Loch Arnish.

 

That was it really, I arrived home to find three Tamworth pigs awaiting dinner

a sure sign of how happy they are 🙂 If a pig does not turn up to be fed at the regular time it is either very sick or very content, two hours after their regular dinnertime I think they were just ‘happy pigs’, they never even bothered to come back last night 🙂

Anyway it’s 22:00 now and my battery is about to die, see, I told you it was a fresh excuse 🙂