Another trail through the wilderness

The center point of todays travel was to be a "backroad" from Ullapool to Lochinver that we learned about at the SRMN meeting in Blackmore. It was described to us as "picturesque". And indeed it was. Like the single track roads of the past few days it was quite outside our experience elsewhere in the world. Usually wilderness roads are gravel and dirt, and often with pot holes, washboards and dust or mud. But this wilderness road was paved, though narrow - usually only 8-9 feet wide, except for the regular passing places. The reason for the pavement though is pretty obvious as the surrounding country side is mostly moor or peat bog so without the pavement the road would probably not survive.

At the start of this road there was a sign telling us that there was a length restriction in force, vehicles under 26feet only. Since that is the length of our truck we decided to press ahead and for most of the road we encountered no problems, even a a couple of points where signs informed us that "this was the difficult bit". However over the last few miles into Lochinver the road followed the sea shore along a steep bay and narrowness and tight turns became a concern, with steep rocks on one side and, stone walls on the other and low trees over head. But with a lot of scraping against branches, a few wheels over rocks and some careful driving we emerged unscathed. At the end of this road Nina said to me "today you passed your honors degree in truck driving".

Earlier in the day (before the ROAD) we passed by Lochewe, which during the Second World War, was a major staging port for convoys headed to Arctic Russia with war supplies. Photo number 4 shows the loch. According to the information plaque at one of the nearby view points at times during the war there were so many ships at anchor in this loch that a person could walk from one shore to the other by going ship to ship.