24th September 2021 – 141 miles travelled
Our stay on the east coast of Scotland has come to and end and today we are moving on to a cottage on the west coast, further north than we have stayed before.
We had to leave Lochend cottage by 10am which wasn’t a problem as we had done most of the packing the night before. I had put a plan for the journey together with scenic stops en route but realising that we couldn’t get into our new cottage until 5pm we did some revising of this.
First stop, a new addition to the plan was The River Bothy, a cafe and shop in Berriesdale not too far south on the A9. The plan was to stop here to take a look at the shop to see if they had any different jams for Gavin, and he did pick one up and some marmalade. They have a lovely cafe, warm and cosy with great selection of home made cakes but was a bit early, however the lady recommended a visit to the beach across the road and short walk away, we were a couple of weeks late to see the Orca’s but there had been dolphins and seal about.
With time to fill it sounded a good option to us. We went across a lovely bridge and pass the Berriesdale memorial then a very wobbly cable suspension bridge that only held one person at a time to reach the beach.
The beach was a stunning stoney beach, looked stunning with a cloudy blue sky.
It was quite windy down on the beach, and we were the only one’s on it for most of the time we were down there. We didn’t see any dolphins but Gavin did spot a seal, in fact we are not sure if there was one seal morning around of if there were a couple of seals out there.
We were glad we took the advice to go and check out the beach, it was a good place to stop, and afterwards we were ready for some hot chocolate and cake to warm up in the cafe, perfect.
After our cake break it was back on the road and heading further south through Golspie to Dornoch, on route we had to drive past Dunrobin Castle again.
Dornoch is famous for it’s sandy beach (and cathedral) and we could see why. It was still a bit windy but not as cold here. The beach is a quite large horseshoe shape and with the cloudy blue sky was stunning, we spent a a little while here taking some photos.
From Dornoch we went onto Lairg to visit the Falls of Shin with a stop at the Wee Hoose.
The Wee Hoose sites on a tiny island in Loch Shin, also knows as the Broons House, there are tales about the house but it was build 20 years ago for a float for the Lairg gala. It has had to be rebuilt twice due to bad weather.
Falls of Shin are on the river Shin, where Salmon have to jump up the river to reach their breading grounds, between May and September is the best time to see then. There is a viewing platform just above the falls where you can watch for the jumping Salmon.
There is a visitors centre at the Falls of Shin where we had planned to have a late lunch but being out of season it was closed 🙁 We had to make do with a mini picnic from our food supply for the new cottage.
After our impromptu late lunch, we completed our journey west to our new cottage for the next week, 3 miles west of Drumbeg. The closer we got the more dramatic the scenery became, much higher, rockier and dotted with Lochs and Lochans.
We knew the cottage was remote, but the road to it was worse than we remembered, a single track road, only just wide enough for the car in places, with passing places, very steep up and down with blind hair pin bends, very scary to drive. When we located the cottage and unloaded etc, we realised as well as no wi-fi (which we were aware of and had expected) there was also no phone signal, we are completely off grid for the next week!