47 Minutes. Within 47 minutes of starting off today I had managed to jackknife the trailer (resulting in a new dent in my car), rip something off of the underneath of my car, get lost, nearly have a head on collision, and almost run out of petrol. Teapot tells me that Karma treats everyone equally, I tell her that's shit.
So let me explain.
We left Clachtoll Beach (the place with zero phone signal and WiFi that was ridiculous) and headed towards Achmelvich, as there is apparently a gorgeous beach down there that is well worth a visit. This is crap by the way.
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| Can't fault the scenery |
A beach there may be beautiful, but it's probably at the end of the road where the campsite/youth hostel is so we decided to turn around and go somewhere else instead (as I have no intention of paying for a campsite I'm not staying at just to go and see a pretty beach?!).
Turning around, that's fine. There was room where I was if I went up onto the slight hill to swing round. I did that and guess what? The hill was actually rocks, rather sharp ones actually. They caught something under my car and ripped it off, in the confusion I hit reverse to get off of the rock and the trailer went corner first into my bumper. Safe to say I was not happy. Unhitched the trailer and assessed the damage, dent isn't too bad but a couple of nasty scratches that will probably cost me a fortune to fix, now the trailer was free it was easier to move the car off the rocks, this produced the realisation that something had been pulled off underneath. I know sod all about cars in all honesty but I had a quick look under and nothing "serious" seemed to be dangling off, the two pieces in my hands were made of plastic and rubber and one was the rubber bit that goes along the bottom of the front bumper, so I knew that wasn't serious, but I had no idea what the other bit was.
We finally turned car round and re-hitched the trailer in order to go back out to civilisation. I only had about 40 miles left in my tank and knew petrol was of the uppermost importance. While 40 miles seems like a lot, it was 36 miles to Ullapool! Luckily Lochinver was only 1 mile away and had a, rather expensive, petrol station!
On the way down the single track road I went round a blind turn only to lock headlights with a Mini Cooper traveeling WAY too fast... luckily we both had very good breaks and didn't swerve down into the sheer drop on the side of the cliff. Teapot and the dogs learnt some new words in that moment and also learnt that I'm an equal opportunities abusee; I don't care if you're a local, if you're from the UK or foreign, I will give you exactly the same amount of road rage!! Dickhead.
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| Highland Coos!! |
I did find out what he was rushing away for though when I had to wait for five minutes down the road due to a couple of escaped Highland Cows! Magnificent animals, really pretty but I think the 3 farmers (not shepherds?) getting them back would beg to differ!!
Quick check under the car on the forecourt and I saw a suspicious looking drip. As I mentioned before I know sod all about cars so had no idea if this drip was supposed to be there or not, asked in the petrol station where the nearest mechanic was and got "there's one down the road but he's on holiday, next one is in Ullapool". Great. I mentioned before that Ullapool was 36 miles away, that was in the opposite direction....
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| Ullapool |
40 odd miles later and we arrive at the Bosch garage in Ullapool, I have to say that was the scariest 40 miles ever as I spent the whole journey listening to every stone hit the car thinking "shit, what fell off? How much is that going to cost me?". Luckily, after a quick check over from a very friendly mechanic, I was told that the bits that were pulled off were just plastic or rubber covers that come off all the time and the drip is actually condensation from the aircon and totally normal! Phew. I will be sending the Bosch garage a thank you card and maybe even a cake as they didn't charge me at all for looking at the car!
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| Ullapool dock |
We decided to stay in Ullapool for a bit and have a look around, free parking in Ullapool!! The town it's self is quite nice, much busier than other towns or villages we've been through so far, which isn't hard really as most of the "villages" consist of about 3 houses and the "towns" stretched to about 10 houses and maybe a church!
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Tasty dinner and the only time Duchers IPA
has ever tasted nice! |
Lucky for us the sun came out too, which made an crappy start to the day feel much better! Lunch was a lovely crab meat sandwhich at a little pub on the seafront. I really love seafood so getting fresh was well worth it!
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Prince and Teapot
cuddle time |
After Ullapool we headed off again towards our next campsite in Gairloch. As usual, the scenery on the way was beautiful but the phone signal has been utterly shit. This is a massive shame because we wanted to check out places to visit en route, especially those that allow doggies in, but this has been near impossible due to the shitty connection (yes I have complained to EE) so I'm kinda worried we may have missed out on some things.
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| Photobombed |
Arrived in Gairloch (actually Strath..?!) fairly early in comparison to every other day and pitched the tents in the daylight! Days seem to last longer up here and it's light until almost 2300. We decided to nip to the local gardening and outdoors shop to get some bait to do some sea fishing, found the shop easily as it was described ad "that modern looking building". Modern, bits of Gairloch/Strath may be, but phone signal and decent WiFi they seriously lack.
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| Pretty |
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Love the light
on her ears! |
We're still really crap at fishing. I had to cut my line after about the third cast when it got stuck in seaweed a few metres out to sea. Teapot carried on and I went for a little picture taking expedition.
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| Soon to be a starter |
We both saw Mussles growing and figured, if we can't catch fish we may as well collect dinner! What a starter!
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| Tasty starter! |
Back to the tent and another early night as my head was throbbing by this point after a pretty stressful day.
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| Prince loves my cloak! |
Day 8's plans: The Isle of Skye!
