Well, the first part of Big Adventure No 3 is nearing its end. Here we are in Gairloch where the weather this afternoon is wet and miserable. Just the one time when we played hookey on doing Bixie's maintenance this morning and went to the Tuesday Market in Poolewe instead. The wind is so strong we can hardly open Bixie's door, and even if we did we would be soaked through in moments . The market was good though, lovely people and good stalls. We were told of its existence yesterday by a lady in the local McColl's car park, we had just returned to our car when she came along and indicated for me to roll down the car window. She had spotted Maya and wanted to tell us how to access the beach as it's not easy to work out. We had actually spent ages earlier and had found it, but by the time we did it seemed Gairloch's entire dog population had as well. She also told us about the local Garden Shop, where I was able to buy a scarf, hat, and gloves - hadn't included them when I packed Bixie - who would have guessed the weather was going to turn out this way 😦. So now, having donned said scarf, hat and gloves, we followed her directions to Redpoint beach where 'What We Did on Our Holiday' was filmed. The road was, of course, single track, 9 miles of it, before coming to a car parking area, a mile or so over fields and dunes, we got our first sight of one magnificent beach and, by that time, the sun obliged by showing its face. We spent an exhilarating hour there, no doubt photos will follow.
HL has managed to get the heating working sometimes, so that is a huge plus. When it works, though it has to be at maximum heat, so it's either a feast or a famine where keeping warm is concerned. We are hoping to have a Chinese takeaway tonight but we still have to find out if it is open during the week or only at weekends 😬😬. No information anywhere on this one. There are two McColl shops, one at each end of the village, so no price competition. Yesterday we were just turning out of the campsite when we saw, to our total astonishment, a Tesco home delivery van, so it was follow that van up and down the roller coaster hills we have come to expect. Think he tried to shake us off a couple of times, but eventually stopped about 5 miles on, so I was able to ask him where the nearest Tesco is - don't know what he was thinking, but he looked at me quite suspiciously as I approached. However, turns out it is in Ullapool, nearly 60 miles away, and they do home deliveries from there. Apparently drivers have to return to base at lunch time, so that eats over 2 hours off their delivery slots each day, we found this out today from that very helpful lady we met in the car park yesterday, who was at the Market this morning.
Had a look around Poolewe while we were there - this was where my Mum's grandfather hailed from. Did find a gravestone for a Kenneth Urquhart who died aged either 59 or 69 in 1887, but no sign of anything about a wife, so who knows. Many of the gravestones were so weathered they were impossible to read.
ML