I fancied an early autumn trip over to Shieldaig in Wester Ross to try the informal campsite on the community grazings and it just so happened to coincide with two of the finest October days that I can remember: no rain, no wind, very sunny (and very warm in the sun) and too late in the year for midges. Idyllic!
Just getting there was impressive enough with terrific views of Torridon …
… not to mention the location and views from the grazings
… or from the bedroom window!
I took the bike with me and had a couple of short rides. It is much hillier than I remembered for cycling and some of the steep ramps finished me off sooner than I would have liked, but I’m not going to complain when everyone else is having to be at work during the week (and just to rub it in: Q – what’s the technical term for a fine sunny day after two days of wind and rain? A – Monday!).
It got cold enough during the evening for those in tents to need quilted jackets and bobble hats when sitting around their stoves; no such necessity with Priscilla although my clothes were pretty Baltic to get in to in the morning (memo to self: switch heater on for 15 minutes before exiting the sleeping bag).
The weather was perfect for my trip. It’s nice to be able to shoot off at the last minute when the forecast is for such fine weather, but for those who can’t be quite so choosy and always seem to end up getting wet on their trips west, here’s a camper’s rhyme that I learned whilst at primary school:
Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not.
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot.
We’ll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not!
Postscript: Since when did ‘bobble hats’ become ‘beanies’? Or more precisely, when did they become ‘pom-pom beanies’? According to an article last year in the fashion pages of the Graun: “There is no doubt that when future generations prise open the fashion time capsule marked “Winter 2015”, it will contain a beanie hat with a furry pom-pom on top“. The accompanying pictures were of bobble hats, referred to in the article as ‘pom-pom beanies’, with several costing less than a tenner. A couple were designer ones north of £100 including this one from net-a-porter.com:
… or as one of the comments to the Graun article said: “Pom-pom beanie, my a**e!”
