Loch Shiel

Today we had a later start, I only had to get up at 6.30am - however when we have been getting up around 5am every day for over a week you just automatically wake up at 5am. We packed up, stripped the beds and did a light clean to leave the house looking reasonable for the cleaners coming in! 

We planned to photograph Skye bridge from up high but the sky wasn’t looking interesting so we went back to photograph a derelict boat at Kyleakin as this time it was high tide which made for a much better photo than when we photographed it previously at low tide. 

We headed off towards Fort William stopping along the way to take photos. We spent some time in Glen Shiel taking photos of the Shiel river with a lovely background of the mountains. There was snow last night and the mountain tops around all had a dusting of snow (see extra). This was followed by coffee and cake at Chocolates of Glenshiel where we also bought some over priced chocolate bars at £6 each!! By now the conditions were perfect, sunny with blue skies but with clouds to add interest to the sky. As we got closer to Fort William we lost the sunshine, we had low clouds and mist. We had a quick lunch in a cafe just outside Fort William and then went off chasing good conditions for photos, but the low clouds just got gloomier with no light. The Three Sisters looked dismal and our plans to go to Glen Etive had to be changed as the cloud was too low. There is hardly any water in the rivers and waterfalls which is surprising in winter. As the skies did not improve as forecast, we turned around and headed west in search of better light. Guy never plans to go to a location because it’s on his list, it’s more about choosing where the conditions are best and then going to that location. 

We went to Loch Shiel and climbed up beyond the viewing point, sloshing up through the mud and snow to get to the very top to get a better point of view, and waited for sunset. However it was covered by low cloud despite some lovely pink in the sky an hour earlier, and the promised sunset never arrived. This was taken from that top viewpoint.

We are staying tonight in the Premier Inn in Fort William, the prestige plus rooms really are not that bad. We have had supper and I must now get to bed as we have a morning of photography before being dropped off at Glasgow airport to fly home again. I am looking forward to seeing Gavin and Xena again.