Year Two, Day Seventy Eight - Croick Estate

Part of my job is to go and take panoramic photographs from several locations then superimpose a wind turbine project into the photograph. It's the best bit about the job I do because for a start I get out of the office!!! Secondly, I get to take photographs and lastly, I get to go to some beautiful places I wouldn't normally have chosen to go to...

So today, I had to travel to a place called Croick Estate for work today - it is about 12 miles west of Bonar Bridge in the Highlands. This is one of the panoramic shots from the client's estate. I thought it was going to be a very scenic trip because it is on the edge of one of SNH's designated Wild Areas but I was disappointed in the estate - not so scenic. Not that it wasn't a nice area, just not as scenic as I had hoped!

I had asked the client if the estate manager could take me to a few of the locations because they are on forestry type track. He said the estate manager was very busy but said I would be able to get so far in my car and walk about a mile or so to the other locations...

So, picked up the key at the gate, drove for what felt like miles along this track (because I had to go slow...) and decided not to go any further with the car. I parked up and walked along to the house you can see in the distance behind this shed, where one of the locations is - there were two beyond this. However, I got to the house and beyond this was a gate and beyond the gate was a field of cows. I'm not scared of cows per se but I was in the middle of nowhere, no-one really knew where I was and I had no signal on my phone... So, I walked back to the car - disaster!!!

I decided to go and do the rest of the photographs, most of which were on a main road - I always think it's funny that some of the A class roads are single track in the Highlands - and thought about contacting the estate manager to see if he could take me along. I still couldn't get a signal on my phone even from the main road. I had 3 locations to go to but I was shattered and the hotel was about 45 minutes away from where I was and I hadn't had any lunch so I was starving and decided to leave the rest until tomorrow.

Of course, it's the school holidays so yesterday, when I was trying to book a hotel for the night, I was struggling to find a place below £130 and I didn't think my boss would appreciate me taking that room... so I found the Dornoch Hotel at £45 reduced from £100. Absolute rip off!!! I was reluctant to take my boots off, no shower - just a bath, mould on the outside wall, mattress crap... Next time I'll go for the £130 room!!!!!

Oh yeah, and no internet at the hotel and the internet on my phone was not so fast either...