Friday 30th September 2022
Today is the first day of our last session for this year. We have decided that, as the nights are drawing in fast and dawn is reluctant to leave her bed in the morning, that we will finish in mid-October and resume the coast of Scotland in the spring when the days are long enough for us to walk a reasonable distance without the risk of finishing over uncertain terrain in the dark. It is a long to drive all the way to the Northwest highlands and I don’t like driving at the best of times.
Today we drove to Strontian from Cumbria. The weather was abysmal; the wind got up and heavy rain lashed us all morning. As we drove through Glencoe, we could hardly see anything. Despondent walkers were waiting at pickup points. The river was a boiling torrent of white water. I was concerned that the Corran ferry might be cancelled but by the time we got there the wind had dropped and the rain had eased off. There was no queue for the ferry and so we were soon across and got to Strontian at about 14:00. We left the Volvo at the car park near the centre of the village and drove back to the lay-by the other side of Loch Sunart and parked the other car where we had left it last time.
We set off with full waterproofs on but, as it turned out, in the 1¾ hours it took us to walk back to the car, it remained dry and we even had some sunshine.
The walk was not especially interesting being entirely along the road. However the weather had left its legacy. All the mountain streams were in spate with white water streaming down the mountain side. The air was beautifully clear and when the sun came out the scenery looked bright and fresh – almost as if it had been hosed clean.
The village of Strontian gives its name to the element Strontium which was discovered here in 1780. Formerly Strontium was used extensively in cathode ray tubes but that use has all but ceased.
We were back at the Volvo by 16.20 and set off to retrieve the other car. We will leave the Volvo at the end of tomorrow’s walk as we drive past on our way to our studio flat in Kilchoan which is our base for the next five nights.
Just Coasting 