Meanwhile in the ‘Village’ :-)

Well that’s it then, the first day at college out of the way, only another 67 to go I’m not going to whine for I’ve got a job, I’m getting paid and I’m quite cosy here in the little caravan A couple of glasses of red wine to help my back pain and a late start tomorrow at http://www.stc.ac.uk/ , things could be a lot worse, I could be in the ‘halls of residence’  

True to form I never slept well last night, or at least I slept just fine until around 3:30am when the Merlot wore off, after which I tossed and turned until 5:30 before getting up to go and shower in the ‘Village’ shower block.

Of course once I’d encountered the electronic combination lock on the toilets in the pishing rain, dark and north easterly gale my ageing eyesight failed to accurately  differentiate between  the numbers and I had to return ‘home’ for my glasses. Don’t get me wrong ‘the Village’ is probably most folks idea of a swell place to stay and I can’t fault it, clean, well run, central and secure but it’s just not my ‘cup of tea’.

 

Northumbrian Leisure’s http://www.northumbrianleisure.co.uk/ caravan park almost on the sea front at South Shields is just luvverly, but it’s just not what an ageing crofter with a 26 year old Land Rover and 40 year old caravan needs, especially at £25 per night   I wouldn’t even mind the £25 so much but after parting with £500 as a deposit the clowns even asked me for the £1165 balance on arrival !!!!!!! Aye that’ll be right I thought, it’s almost October there’s like three other caravans and motorhomes pitched here in the rapidly diminishing ‘season’ and these clowns want me to part with another grand or so    I know Raasay is out in the sticks but I’ve not just landed off a banana boat OK, their normal clientele may well drive new and expensive German marques but from what I can see there are precious few of them about at this time of year

 

In fact, from what I saw today there was precious little of anyone around at this time of year, the amusement parks being closed and the beaches deserted.

 

 

I know that I said I’d given up swearing but

 

you’d think that they’d be trying to encourage folk to stay here and not screw them before they’d settled in.

The ‘Hairy Bikers’

They’re not hairy and they are not bikers (at least as far as I know) but our first day at college was ‘eased’ by a pair of tutors that bounced of each other with an almost choral lilt peculiar to the industrial north east and Welsh valley’s Much of what they said (to some of us at least) was akin to teaching ‘granny how to suck eggs’  but it was delivered in such a way as to never seem dull or boring. OK, I now know how to use a micrometer and vernier calliper once more.

   

 

however it was delivered in such a fashion as to prevent the mind wandering off elsewhere

Gosh I fell asleep at the wheel there, it’s now 5:45 and I’m going back to bed for an hour, the wee caravan is rocking in the fierce onshore wind and the rain is still battering the windows. Radio 4 is telling me that there’s been a months rain here overnight but I have to say that it’s nothing compared to what we can normally  receive on Raasay at this time of year. 

The old A87 :-)

Well we made it, the ‘Old Girl’, Thompson Glenelg and I are now being buffeted by a rising wind from the east just a few hundred yards from the North Sea. I might as well be on a different planet, my forty year old home looking grossly out of place amongst the chick statics, gleaming white tourers and massive motorhomes. Sure http://www.northumbrianleisure.co.uk/sandhaven_index.php is immaculate, clean, centrally situated and secure.

To me however it feels more like ‘The village’

and I feel like ‘Number 6’  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner in the surreal 1960s TV series that got its first airing some 45 years ago this week. Though my pitch here is number 3 and not 6

 

I may have only been eleven but I can still remember the registration number of Patrick Mcgoohan’s Lotus 7, KAR 120C

This morning I left the calm of rural Perthshire around 10:00am

 

the rolling hills, mixed woodland and burbling Braan

 

replaced by a hectic and at times misty  A9, then A1 southwards.

 

The contrast from yesterdays journey could not have been more stark, long gone the leisurely pace of stopping every few miles to admire something, have a rest and let traffic by. This leg of the journey was short on beauty, or at least my vision of it, seldom on stopping places and much busier. In truth it was probably far quieter than normal but to me it was hectic, and whilst I pulled over as often as possible to let folk by it was not until Dunbar that I found a large and empty stopping place where I could relax for a while.

The flooded glens

When I awoke on Saturday morning prior to leaving Arnish I imagined, or should I say thought I’d imagined the distant roaring of a stag. I dismissed it as ‘wishful thinking’ and after doing all my final ‘pre flight checks’ headed south for the ferry. I had all day to get to the highly recommended Invermill caravan park  http://www.invermillfarm.com/Invermill/Welcome_to_Invermill.html so was going to make the most of it. The weather was perfect and for once in my life I had no deadline or ferry to catch.

 

My first stop was a lay by on the A87 on the shores of a much depleted Loch Cluanie, this fresh water loch having been greatly enlarged in the 1950s by the construction of the Cluanie dam a few miles to the east. As part of the electrification of Scotland in the post war years both the lochs of Cluanie and Loyne to the south had been dammed.

 

Leaving the Land Rover I ventured down to the waters edge across the remains of several clumps of what must once have been substantial trees. The short bursts of traffic along the road being interspersed by spells of silence punctuated by a solitary roaring stag somewhere up one of the glens to the north.

 

So long had the loch been dry that green growth had started to appear on the fertile peaty soil.

And here it is, the original A87 from sixty years ago looking much better than some of the roads on Raasay in places.

So much for ‘the wettest summer in 100 years’  more likely from the new road that the old but this ‘cats eye’ I found in the loch looked quite sad  

 

This is one of the old bridges now visible

but I couldn’t stop so used a picture taken by http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/37389 just a few weeks ago.

This is how the area looked in 1939 

 

Here’s a map from 1939 and you can see the A87s original route from Tomdoun to the Cluanie hotel.

 

If you zoom in on the map you can clearly see the old road where it crosses Loch Loyne where the island is.

This is one of the two bridges that once used the wooded island as a ‘stepping stone’, usually well under the water this picture was taken when the loch was exceptionally low a few years ago.

Here’s the smaller Loch Loyne bridge from Trevor Wright’s picture here http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/969186

 

The public road network in the West of Scotland was not developed to its current standard until relatively recent times. Many roads used to be improvements on former drovers tracks, and narrow, twisting and steep as they crossed mountain passes.
One famous old road was the "Road to the Isles", a segment of which ran from the current-day Tomdoun Sporting Lodge Hotel north-west past Cluanie Lodge to Cluanie Inn. This passed over two rivers which were dammed and flooded to form Lochs Cluanie and Loyne in around 1957. A new road, the current A87, was constructed around the edge. The old tracks to Loch Loyne are now gated and in private ownership but accessible by walkers and mountain bikers.
Where the "Road to the Isles" crossed what is now Loch Loyne, there were two bridges and a small wooded island. The road, and the small (shown here) and large bridges still exist but are usually wholly or almost wholly submerged below the waterline for much of the year and unreachable and unpassable. However, in September each year, Scottish Hydro Power reduce the level of the water in the Lochs and in early September 2008 it was at exceptionally low levels. The old road and bridges were reachable and indeed passable by walkers or mountain bikers. It should be noted the larger bridge is, from a formal Health and Safety viewpoint, far too dangerous to walk across but many do at their own risk.
The story of the "Road to the Isles" or "The Roof of the Highlands" was covered by Nicholas Crane ("Mapman") in one of his 2007 BBC 2 TV series "Great British Journeys" about the writings of early travellers, in this case H.V. Morton’s tours of Scotland in 1929-33 in a Bullnose Morris car.

Taken from the same source

Anyway it’s 7:25 on Monday now so I’d better get ready for the first day at college