Thursday, July 3, 2008

The opportunity for mist and rain in Scotland...

Are plentiful!





One second the views are far reaching and spectacular and the next second the mist is rolling in followed by rain, hail and sleet!

These pictures where taken on the back roads between Inverness and Skye... For the first time in my travels I felt I had left the beaten path. The roads where single track roads with "passing areas" and "Police Notices: Let cars behind you bass...". and while you would think there would not be too much traffic I was forever letting the Scottish racing drivers pass me in one of the little "passing areas".

I decided to stay the night at the local back packer. I arrived in the pouring rain to find a lone cyclist huddled outside the hostel. Check in was in 30m time and this poor sod (Richard from Philadelphia come sailer and traveler) took my invitation to wait out the storm in the car where we swapped some stories.

Eventually the proprietor meandered out of the establishment to let us in. The hostel was again a bare mountaineering type of dorm room thing and on top of having to hire your bunk you could hire bedding as well... As it turned out they could not accept plastic and I was told the nearest machine was 10 miles down the road! The plus side was that I could get some quality fishing in... as soon as I had my hands on some cash.

So - Honey and I shot off down the road to get cash and a license from "The Butcher". But it was not to be... It was around this time that my suspicions where aroused that Honey had something up her sleeve... And then she stopped... although the engine was turning and she idled perfectly "she no go forward!".

And when Honey does not want to go forward the next best thing is to set up camp, make some coffee, write a few notes and have a nap. Which I did in precisely that order.



She could not have picked a better place to have a fit. As it turnd out there was deer at the side of the road. Looking this up later I discovered that Scotland has both rein deer and red deer.

Unfortunately I was evacuating my bladder at the time and could not quite juggle my camera out my pocket at the same time to get a snap shot... so you will have to take my word for it!

Later on I poked my nose under Honey and inspected her cv joints and it appeared that she had spat some of her bolts out. There was one left in the joint and walking down the road I found another one (half bent). So with a single cv joint bolt I called my insurance company to get them to find the nearest specialist to pop out with an alan key. Two hours later the local handyman was at my aid and he removed some bolts from the other joint and Honey was back on the road! The guy was kind enough to take me to a spectacular stop for the night overlooking the Kyle of Lochalsh.



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