Autumn in N.W. Scotland

[TC]

Cindy and I were up in Ullapool for a Guitar festival this weekend but also managed to have a look at the Autumn colour which is coming on.  The Rowans and Birches are setting their brilliant colours before the leaves fall in a few weeks.  Even the beach scenery at Durness is taking on a winter aspect.  We did a 4 mile walk along the beach at Balnakeil in a steady force 8 gale  - invigorating !!  We met some of our NATO allies in the shape of the Bundeswehr driving up and down the beach to the gunnery range observation building while we oldies walked.  Young people now-a-days !!!
The pictures of the festival are to make Mr. Young terminally jealous.

[Maggi Young]

My  goodness, what lovely photos... the beach looks SO good... glad not to feel the wind though!
 Just wait til Ian sees your festival pix... he will be GREEN!

[Lesley Cox]

Some real oldies there Tom

Love the trees, something to rival Kristl's pictures?

[ranunculus]

Magnificent, Tom...

Andy Fairweather-Lowe ... looking older than the hills ...

[David Nicholson]

A F-L, one of my heroes. Clapton always plays better when A F-L is in his band.

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Marvelous stuff Tom !!
Great pix - of nature and old heroes !! 

[Paul T]

Tom,

Very cool to see the deciduous forest starting...... we have so few deciduous trees here in Aus, predominantly only imported plants and therefore no "natural" forests of them.  Something I always am amazed at seeing,hillsides of deciduous trees.  Yes, I know it wasn't quite the reaction you were probably expecting, but you just never know which pictures are going to thrill which people.    Thanks for the pics.

[TC]

For Ian Young
Look at the Fylde guitar picture and the guitar second from the right.  I tried them all and picked this one as my favourite.  It was made of Brazilian rosewood with a sempervirens soundboard, ebony fingerboard and bridge.  I talked to the luthier at length and this was his favourite also.  I could have taken it away for £4950 !!!   I am glad to say that it did not sound any better than the one Jimmy Moon made for me.  I could quite happily have loaded up my car with a load of guitars but Cindy cannot understand why I could possibly need any more.  I am sure that if it was shoes or chocolate it would have been a different matter !  As an aside, we went into a small chocolate factory in Durness after our hike in the gale and had the best cup of hot chocolate ever with a toffee croissant - with me on statins for chloresterol and high blood pressure.  It was worth it.  A young woman in the shop was the proverbial child in a sweet shop and left with £40.00 of chocolate with her partner picking up the bill.  The smile on her face was a pleasure to see.

[johnw]

Cheating a bit as this is New Scotland today.

A tarn overlooking the ocean and Gaylussacia baccata - my autumn favourite - against granite rock. The latter was taken near Maggi's favourite swimming hole - Chocolate Lake.

johnw (Nova Scotia)

[Martinr]

Thanks Tom, it's only 3 months since I spent 2 weeks in Assynt and surrounds and you've made me yearn to return already. The trick with the Durness chocolate factory is to ensure your other half has eaten a hearty breakfast before you get there! I'm also glad I've stopped messing with guitars and started playing fiddle. You can get a lot of old fiddle for a lot less than a new Fylde guitar and it's even more portable.

[Maggi Young]

A young woman in the shop was the proverbial child in a sweet shop and left with £40.00 of chocolate with her partner picking up the bill.  The smile on her face was a pleasure to see.

Aw, bless her, a whole day's supply, eh? 

The trick with the Durness chocolate factory is to ensure your other half has eaten a hearty breakfast before you get there!

Amateurs! A professional piglet such as myself is never so easily diverted from the important things in life.....



Ian is speechless about the Guitar Festival... he knew nothing about it and is ratty about missing it... and all those lovely instruments and new ones too... and the "heroes"....... he's lying down in darkened room  even as I write this... 

We like the look of the rosewood guitar, too...... if it sounds as good as it looks.....
 Your Jimmy Moon is a real beauty, though, Tom.... I bet there were plenty at the festival who would even you that instrument.

[David Nicholson]

Cheating a bit as this is New Scotland today.

A tarn overlooking the ocean and Gaylussacia baccata - my autumn favourite - against granite rock. The latter was taken near Maggi's favourite swimming hole - Chocolate Lake.

johnw (Nova Scotia)

Lovely part of the world John.

[Maggi Young]

I am a huge fan of chocolate errrr..... Ericaceae and if I could get colour like that on the Gaylussacia I would be a very happy woman.... sadly it never coloured so well here and was an untidy shape too, so it was given away to someone making a big new garden on a hillside 

[Paul T]

A young woman in the shop was the proverbial child in a sweet shop and left with £40.00 of chocolate with her partner picking up the bill.  The smile on her face was a pleasure to see.

Aw, bless her, a whole day's supply, eh? 

Maggi,

Surely not a WHOLE day.  With the cost of chocolate these days that amount wouldn't even last til afternoon tea time would it? 

Glorious autumn colour John!!

[TC]

Some more pictures from our trip.  We visited the new visitor centre at Culloden which is a huge improvement over the previous site.  The clan gravestones are quite moving in their simplicity.  It is rather a strange feeling to realise that some of your distant ancestors are buried there.
Although I used to go mountaineering in my youth my head for heights has now gone.  The walk over the suspension bridge at Corrieshalloch, with a three hundred foot vertical drop, left me clutching the handrail and feeling distinctly uneasy.  When I look at the mountains I used to climb, they seem twice as high and ten times more dangerous.  The joys of old age!!