Loch Coruisk and the inaccessible Cuillins

We took the boat trip into the heart of the Cuillins today - to Loch Coruisk.

The demographic of those on the boat was older than I expected. I guess there aren't any families on holiday in this area at this time of the years - schools are still in operation. There were a couple of elderly gentlemen, the oldest of whom was 86, who had come to paint. The younger one was sketching - inkpen and water brush - on the inward leg, in a manner that made me very wistful. I used to do that type of sketching on holiday, and would like to have the time to do it again. But (you can skip this if you don't want to read my witterings) that type of holiday involved very little walking and (on my part) no photography. I need the walking on holiday because I miss it otherwise, but miss the painting and sketching, and now - of course - I've taken up photography in a much more substantial way. I guess there really is no answer but to retire and find time to do all those things, one after the other. Anyway, the painters were staying all day on the lochside. They were going to paint 'until they dropped'. I asked them if they had a hip flask. They said - mysteriously - 'we have provisions'.... I left it at that. To ask more would have been impolite.

Wittering onwards, another area of regret concerns the mountains. I'll obviously never climb the Cuillins - any of them - but I would have loved to have done so thirty years ago. At that time, when walking holidays in the Lake District and then the Welsh Mountains were a regular occurrence, Skye seemed so far away and so inaccessible. Now the mountains are inaccessible in a different sort of way...

Anyway, I had to blip the lake I mean loch (I was told off by Kaybee...), as I was told to. But I also wanted to blip the mountains.

Off for a (posh) fish supper soon.