Ullapool to Thurso

Sunday 18 July


Another grey start to the day but at least it wasn't raining! We drove out of Ullapool and once again kept to the coastal road as much as possible. The roads were almost deserted of traffic & the scenery was stunning. We stopped at a few of the geological stops of Knockan Crag “rock route” as most of them had stunning views. But because we were going so far, we didn't do any of the short walks.

We had lunch at Smoo Cave on the north coast. By the time we'd eaten the weather was really starting to clear up so we walked down to see the cave. Neither of us are big fans of caves & this one wasn't particularly startling although it did have a big waterfall falling into it. The banks next to the path had “graffiti” on them written in white stones laid out on the grass. I've never seen anything like it! We walked out to the coast next to the loch and the sun came out behind us so that we got rainbows in the loch! Very pretty. The views from the coast were stunning and a bit of a surprise as we weren't expecting it. The wind was really strong – it felt a bit as though it could pick you up & let you fly!

From Smoo we had a pleasant drive in much nicer weather to Thurso. Along the way we finally found the perfect phone box & letter box in the middle of nowhere that we'd been looking to photograph for days. It had been a very long day's driving by the time we got into Thurso and we walked around the town a bit to find a nice place to eat. We ended up having mexican in a nice pub and a reasonably early night's sleep.