The return journey begins

This morning we all got a bit of a lie-in since we were in no rush to get out and shoot anything.  I think the extra half hour made a difference.  We woke to overcast skies and Karl said the outlook for our journey south towards Edinburgh wasn’t promising.  We decided at breakfast that there were a few target sights we had to skip earlier this week that we hoped to hit again so would meander our way towards Edinburgh with those in mind.

My breakfast was the same as previous days.  I will miss my porridge with berry compote!  I was already mostly packed so just pulled the rest of it together and said goodbye to my gorgeous room.

It didn’t take long before the rain and low clouds and fog caught up with us, or we caught up with it.  And our first couple of stops were scuppered because of the rain or the low visibility that wouldn’t add any visual interest.  I think we all had our hopes set on the cute little white bothy house at the bottom of the valley, but despite really good looking skies when we approached it, Karl zipped past it.  I could sense Don getting frustrated, so the next time we stopped he asked Karl why we didn’t stop there.  Karl was worried about us parking on such a busy road and having to cross traffic.  Fair enough, but we’re all adults and I still would have liked to try.

So we skipped the bridge, the bothy house and a castle that all were reasonable possibilities.  We did stop at the entrance road to Glen Etive, where we’d seen the raging waterfall earlier this week, because the very very low hanging clouds were really putting on a good show around the mountains.  I felt I could reach up and snatch them right out of the air.  The light and the clouds were changing so fast that it was a good exercise in adjusting on the fly, recomposing and getting the shot. It was neat.

We stopped at Karl’s cafe again on our way through Glencoe and I got to have my vegetarian haggis flatbread again, which was wonderful.

Earlier this week, I charged my Garmin watch in the room.  I realized when we got to Portree that I’d lost my Garmin charger, presumably at the hotel in Glencoe as that’s where I last charged it.  When we left Karl’s cafe today, we zipped back over to our Glencoe hotel because Jamie had left his rain pants there.  I asked Don if I could pop in too and just ask about my charger.  The gentleman at reception reached beneath the desk and put a large box of cords, chargers and plugs in front of me.  I lost hope and didn’t want him to have to go through this entire knot of mismatched, orphaned cords.  “Don’t worry about it, I don’t want to take up your time,” I said.  “You’ve already got me started, let’s just see what we find,” he replied.  And wouldn’t you know, he had my Garmin charger!  I was overjoyed.

After not too long, we were at Hampton Inn at Edinburgh Airport.  We said goodbye to Karl and checked into our rooms while Don returned the vans.  We had some drinks in the bar and ordered some mediocre food while we had one last chat about things.  I’ve been talking with Cindy (who hiked up Old Man of Storr with me yesterday) about doing the puffin trip in July next year.  She flies from San Antonio to do these trips with Don.

While we were driving back and some of my fellow travelers were dozing the miles away, I started of things I’ll miss about Scotland:

The little white dots up and down the side of mountains that are actually sheep!  They climb so high.

And while we’re talking about sheep, that they just wander in the road, or sit on the edge of the road staring at oncoming traffic, completely relaxed, chewing their cud.

The fir trees that look as if they’ve been watercolor brushed up a canvas, all needles pointing heaven-ward.

The snark of the Scottish, never sure if it’s tongue in cheek or a jab with a smile. Maybe this is where I get my snark from.

Moss-covered walls separating bright green plots of grass.

Hearing Cindy call out “good morning” to every hiker we passed on the way up and down the trek yesterday (like we do as runners every morning!)

Porridge, fish & chips, Gregg’s sausage rolls, chocolate gingerbread, and all sorts of gins I’ll never find at home.

Time to wrap this up for today and head to bed.  Up at 5:30 for my flight to London then Boston tomorrow.  I miss my kids!

Look at the whale

Friday, November 7th

I woke up this morning and knew even before I looked at my Garmin that I’d recovered from the cold.  All week, it’s been telling me that I’m nearing the end of life with horribly low body battery and even worse sleep scores.  This morning, I was back in the 80s for my sleep scores and almost fully charged battery.  In short, I was ready to take on the Old Man of Storr hike.  There are some adventures on trips that I just have expectations for them being the gems of the trip.  Hiking Cinque Terre was one.  My day of hiking in Slovenia. And not so secretly, today was one of them.  I didn’t research all too much for this trip, but knew that if any day was going to almost demand perfect weather and my stamina, it would be today.  After a rocky week of both hellacious rain and a nasty cold, I had my doubts.  But waking up feeling so much better and seeing the light of full moon (which meant it wasn’t overcast for once!) gave me hope for today.

Back at the start of the trip, Karl and his daughter Inna gave a presentation on what he’d hope we’d get to see this week.  His laundry list of sights was long and he knew it was industrious. But at the end of the slide show, Inna presented us with an image of a whale.  She said we’d take good photos, we’d take bad photos.  We’d see things we loved and things we weren’t so excited about.  But in any event we ought to remember that we’re on vacation, we’re here to absorb and not just take the shot and tick the box. She told us to stop and look at the whale.  Appreciate what we’re seeing. And throughout the week, one of us would periodically say to the group “look at the whale”, especially when we were so heads down trying to compose and dial-in our best shots.

Birds woke me at 5:45 when it was still fully pitch black out.  I jumped out of bed and used the Merlin app to discover it was the European robins again.  I saw the moonlight on my windowsill and was thrilled that it meant that at least part of the sky was clear on the morning we were planning to shoot sunrise.  We met at the vans at 7:15 and drove to an open field that was facing the Old Man of Storr, the basalt rock formation that rose over 1000 feet over us.  The very same rock formation I was planning to hike later that morning.

All set up on tripods with our settings dialed in, we started shooting in the blue hour, just before the sun starts to light the sky pink, when everything is toned blue.  It looked for a while like we might luck out and the clouds behind us started to brighten and perhaps it would cast a golden glow on the Old Man.  Alas, while it did not rain (at last!), the clouds did sufficiently cover up the direct light of the sun so that the Old Man never glowed golden, but we did get some pretty dramatic skies nonetheless.

We zipped back to our hotel for breakfast at 9 (same as last two days) and headed back out to the Old Man of Storr.  Of the ten of us, only 3 (Jamie, Cynthia and me) decided to do the hike.  I was a bit worried because I’d had a pretty serious coughing fit at breakfast, but I took one more dose of cold meds before we left the hotel and hoped for the best.  Karl led us up the climb.  There was a pretty nice (but steep!) path for the first part of it, then it became what Cynthia first said was a “proper set of steps” but really was just uneven pavers set to lessen the steepness of certain parts.  It was a mile and a half of climbing (106 floors) and 45 minutes up.  Karl pointed out a flat-topped rock formation way up and said it was “photographers’ mound” where folks like us went for the best angles of the best views.  That’s where we were headed.

The climb wasn’t hard but it was more a matter of staying sure-footed.  Between the uneven steps and a bit of mud here and there, it was important to keep my eyes open.  I made it a bit sweatier than when I left street-level.  But what I found up top was so worth it.  Beyond worth it.  It was quite simply the most spectacular view I’ve seen in a while. In one direction, it was the rock formation of the Old Man of Storr.  In another it was rolling hills out to the North Sea.  We set up our tripods and started taking photos with Karl as our consultant.  The light was amazing and kept changing from one minute to the next.  I was happy with what I was seeing (but of course won’t know how well I caught it until I get these photos home).  After 20 minutes or so, Karl told us to put down the camera and breathe in what we were seeing. Really look with our own eyes and not through a lens.  Look at that whale!! He’d been serious when he seemingly joked that he got misty-eyed by how great the light was this morning and he fired off many shots of his own.  I felt blessed.  What a perfect moment in time.  What a perfect whale.

It only took us a half hour to get down.  We met up with our fellow travelers and Don and drove across the nearby Quiraing region to the village of Uig where we had lunch at the Uig Hotel.  Uig itself is a tiny little village on a tiny nook of a harbor off the North Sea.  All the houses are tiny white cottages, some with thatched roofs, pointing face forward right to the sea.  Lunch was really good.  I had a sandwich of hummus, sweet chilli, roasted peppers on brown bread and with a side of fries.  I washed it all down with Irn Bru, which is a Scottish citrus flavored soda.

After lunch we zipped back up into the Quiraing which is similar rock formations with views over a steep valley and out to the sea.  While the sun had pretty much given up for the day by this time, we were lucking out with the late day light and clouds.  We selected several spots along the paths that wound their way around the area.  I enjoyed this for the immensity of it, for feeling the perspective of being a small speck in such a grand natural world.  The colors, the light, the air and the immense scope of it all combined to make for a completely magical afternoon.  The time here just flew by as we left well after sunset.

We arrived back at the hotel around 5:45 and dinner was at 7.  I needed a shower after my long sweaty morning and I also got a head start on packing since we head back to Edinburgh tomorrow.  I had my favorite courses from the last couple days (the bleu cheese and fig croquette, salmon and chocolate gingerbread) and enjoyed the conversation around the table.

Tomorrow we get a bit of a lie-in as we’re not leaving until 9:30.  I’m tired but blissfully so. The activity today felt good, I felt good and I feel so lucky to have gotten to see that amazing corner of the world. It was another good day…

Back at it

Thursday, November 6

I woke up today feeling somewhat better.  Not as tired, not as hot/cold, not as snuffly, as yesterday.  After a shower and breakfast (same as yesterday), I decided I’d be ok to rejoin the group today.  It helped too that far less rain was forecast.  All systems were go.

We started the day walking around Portree and photographing the harbor, which is lined with brightly painted pastel houses.  I spent some time with Don looking at different angles to shoot from but I also think I did pretty well on my own too.  Portree is a decent sized town, certainly not tiny, but it has a nice array of shops, cafes and views to fill a morning, which we did.  I bought some tartan purses and hit a gin shop where I did a tasting and bought a gin for me and a vodka for my sister, as well as a small bottle of wild cherry moonshine, which ought to be interesting!

Along the pier was a whale watching company which was touting humpbacks, orcas and puffins as well as the famous sea eagle (not to be confused with seagull).  It was soooooo tempting.  If I had free time here I would definitely do that.

Our next stop was a ruined church in a cemetery.  The church was literally just the four walls.  No roof, no interior.  There were old headstones in various states of decay around the church, many of them from the 1700s and 1800s.  The majority of the dead were servicemen. The cemetery wasn’t terribly well kept; there was a lot of uncut grass and uneven ground.  It had all the character that made it a wonderful place to work with from a photographic perspective.  I spent almost all my time with Don here.  He really helped me compose the shots and realize how to make the overcast sky work. There were sheep milling around which just added to the atmosphere.  I haven’t looked at my photos yet, but I am really anxious to see them.

We hopped back in the vans and headed toward the Sligachan Bridge, but by the time we got there it was raining pretty steadily so we gave up on that planning to hit it on our way back to Portree.  We continued on to Kyleakin, a tiny seaside village that is home to the ruins of a 15th century castle.  

The castle itself is perched on a hill surrounded on three sides by water.  We approached it from within the village and shot across the small inlet, which was interesting enough, but approaching it more directly on a path on the hill, we noticed there was a small boat that had wrecked in front of it, and a much larger boat that had beached further inland.  What is it with all these ruined boats here?  And these were definitely shipwrecked and not to be confused with perfectly good boats that are just sitting in very low tide and will be floating again the next time the tide comes in.

Anyway, at one point early on in our visit here, my camera battery ran low.  I walked back to the van and passed a small gift shop.  A gentleman was standing on the sidewalk, so I smiled and said hi.  I stopped to chat and he asked me what I knew about the Isle of Skye flag.  I said not much at all and he responded “well, what will you tell people at home if they ask you about the flag?”  That made me giggle because of course there is little to no chance that anyone will ask me, but I played along.  His accent and his cheekiness had captured me.  He asked what we were doing and invited the group back after we were done to visit his shop and he’d take a photo of us with the flag and give us a shot of Drambuie.

We spent so much time with the castle and the shipwrecks that there was no way we’d make it back to the bridge we’d abandoned earlier in the day before the sun set.  Because I know Don’s personality, I knew he’d like the guy I met at the gift shop and he’d want to take his portrait.  Since we now had no reason to rush out of the village, we stopped at the gift shop.  My new friend, named Mark, greeted us and told us the story of the flag (designed by a 9-year-old local boy), set us up for a group photo with the flag, and gave us our Drambuie.  Mark and Don really hit it off and we all really enjoyed our brief visit with Mark.  What really struck me though was when Don shook Mark’s hand and said he’d come back when the group returns next year, Mark said “next year, we’ll hug because we’ll be friends then.”  Damn, if that doesn’t tug your heart strings.  This will definitely be one of my best travel memories.

Dinner was at 7 and we made it back around 5:45.  A quick rest in the room and we caught up over drinks in the bar.  The menu changed a bit tonight, thankfully.  I think we were all relieved we wouldn’t have the same choices for a third night.  Tonight I had the smoked mackerel mousse with a pickled apple slaw and freshly made crackers.  It was heavenly.  My main was pan fried salmon with a crab butter sauce.  That was just so good, I don’t even have the words.  Thankfully the chocolate gingerbread was still on the menu tonight so I chose the perfect ending to a wonderful meal.

Tomorrow actually appears to be a perfect weather day (gasp!) so we’re up early to go shoot sunrise and then head north.

Down for the count

Wednesday, November 5th

I woke up at 3 am and was texting my sister at home and realized how crummy I felt.  I decided then that if I took a shower and had breakfast and still didn’t feel better, I’d stay here today.  Not just for my own recovery but also out of fairness for my van-mates.  Then I saw that it was absolutely bucketing down rain and would be all day and that sealed it.  I decided to stay here and rest.  So this will be a short blog entry.

Breakfast was wonderful. I had porridge with mixed berries, malted toast with marmalade, fruit cup, coffee and juice.  It was very tasty and certainly a change from the yogurt I’ve been eating for over a week.  Lunch was the prepared bagged lunch that I would have had if I went out today:  cheese and onion jelly sandwich, potato chips and a caramel bar.

I spent most of the day watching British game shows (Lingo, The Chaser, Tipping Point) and drinking water.  

I got up for dinner at 6:45.  The group had just gotten back and they were all a soggy mess.  Many said that they didn’t enjoy the day out and weren’t getting many good photos due to the rain blowing sideways.  They also didn’t go anywhere that I would have been sad to miss.  So I feel I made the right choice to stay here.  For dinner, I had the same starter and main as last night (the hotel had not changed up the set menu yet) but instead of the gingerbread, I got the pear and plum tart which was good, but not as good as the gingerbread last night.

Back to watching game shows.  Hoping to be back on the road tomorrow.

A dry day

I woke up today with a confirmed cold which was resting mostly in my throat so it is more livable than a constantly runny nose.  We met to eat quickly at 7:30 and wanted to be outside the hotel on the bay for sunrise or closely thereafter.  It was clearing up nicely but with some remnant clouds for a bit of drama.  I purposely asked more questions today and got more help with my new wide angle lens, which I think turned out nicely.

We spent a lot of time here and didn’t hit the road until 9:30.  Our first stop was in Fort William where there is a shipwrecked boat right on the beach.  I worked with Karl first and learned how to do exposure bracketing, which will help even out the darks on the ship and the highlights in the sky.  The problem is I won’t see exactly how it worked until I get home and combine the three exposures into one in Lightroom.  Ah well, something to look forward to!  I also used my wide angle lens here to photograph the ship from a very low angle at the bow, which should look really interesting.  The culture or history behind a lot of our stops gets a bit lost in the photography so I’ve been making a point to either ask or look it up myself. In this case, an inebriated captain beached the ship in a bad storm and the water has never risen enough to float the boat again, so it’s just been left.  I saw another one further up the coast also just left to decay in place.

We ate another lunch from Karl’s cafe today.  I had cheese and chutney sandwich with potato chips and a lovely slice of date nut pound cake.

From here we drove on towards the Isle of Skye.  Karl stopped for us at a hairy coo farm.  They had six hairy coos of various ages, which was cool to see (and quieted a few of the women who’d been repeatedly asking about them).  But more significant for me was a wild deer sighting near the farm.  I quickly swapped out my landscape lens for my longer lens and got some really nice shots.  It was a truly handsome animal.  I was thrilled to have seen it.

Next stop was Eilean Donan castle, which I must have seen on a million calendars over the course of my life.  Never did I think I’d ever get to see it!  We set up in a great spot and again I worked with Don on perspective and composition.  Still using my exposure bracketing, I took a zillion photos even dabbling in some black and white.  We moved our positions a few different times to get different angles.  I’m really hopeful they come out well when I get them compiled back home.

It took another 45 minutes or so to get to Portree, where our hotel is.  It was dark and (surprise!) raining again after being dry all day.  The area looks really pretty but I’m really looking forward to seeing it in the daylight.  The hotel is gorgeous. My room is huge with a big soft king bed.  It is quite warm too so I turned the radiator off and opened a window or I’ll be coughing all night.

Dinner tonight was lovely.  I chose the bleu cheese croquette with the potato gnocchi and the chocolate gingerbread with gingerbread ice cream.  The croquette had a sliced fig which was a nice pairing.  The gnocchi was unlike any I’ve had before, it was more like rigatoni stuffed with potato with a light almond sauce rather than tomato.  The gingerbread was to die for.  I’m a big gingerbread fan and this did not disappoint.

Early to be because I hope to beat the worst of the cold before tomorrow’s activities.

Just call him Noah

Our poor local guide, Karl, is really at a loss when it comes with what to do with us now.  The rain, even for here, is pretty relentless.  We get moments of brightening and apparent pause, but by the time the 10 of us get out of the vans, grab all the gear and start to make our way to whatever it is we’re shooting, we’re all wet again.  He joked this morning that now we just ought to call him Noah.  I feel for him, he’s digging deep for indoor things for photographers to do.

The day started at the same time with the same breakfast as yesterday. I woke up with a scratchy throat that didn’t clear up all day.  I was also cranky (yes, really!) and tired of being wet.  But I signed up for this, so I’ll stop my griping.  Until the next paragraph.

I’m in the second van, driven by Don.  He just follows Karl.  He has a loose idea of where we’re headed.  This morning we headed out despite knowing it would likely be a washout all day.  Our first stop was Kilchurn Castle on Loch Awe.  It is a gorgeous ruined castle at the base of a mountain and on the loch.  When we pulled up at the side of the road, it was raining moderately but I saw Accuweather said we’d have a window of about 40 minutes in 20 minutes.  So we waited, and Accuweather was right.  The rain abated and we were all at the ready to hop out. The problem was we were on the road and between us and the castle was about 1/8 of a mile of soggy bog.  Off went Karl in his Wellies.  I’ll cut to the chase, I followed and gave up. It was far too deep water for me to keep going.  I didn’t want to sit in wet shoes all day.  I thought for a moment that maybe I should have brought my hiking shoes from Rwanda but now in retrospect and in seeing how wrecked my fellow travelers’ shoes were, I don’t think they would have helped.

So I found a somewhat solid plot of land for me to stand and shoot.  It was bright enough that I thought I could handhold the camera.  And I shot shot shot away.  Then I realized I probably ought to bump up the ISO a bit but then noticed all my menus were different and couldn’t find that setting.  So I kept shooting. Turns out I was still on the sunset setting from last night when the camera was on a tripod.  Long story short, I got crap photos on the camera.  Only a few iPhone shots and not very good at all.  I tried to make my way to Don for some help but he’d made it so far down to the loch and then the rain really kicked in again, I just abandoned the effort.  I was really cranky and frustrated.

Our next stop was Saint Conan’s Kirk, a 15th century church on Loch Awe.  It is a gothic church and the thought was that we’d do some detail work here.  Part of why I’m doing this trip is because I don’t feel I have a great creative eye, and I have trouble breaking a whole down into parts.  But my camera settings were still mucked up and I was frustrated from the castle, so I was spiraling.  Don finally miraculously fixed my menus and I dug in to try to salvage something from the church shoot.  I found a lion statue in the cloisters that really lit me up, so I started there.

Lunch was from Karl’s shop while standing in the cloister.  I had a cheese, tomato and pesto sandwich with chips and the best pound cake I’ve had in a long time.

We next went to the Cranachan Power Plant for a quick walk through of their exhibit and a snack in the cafe.  I really enjoyed the birdwatching outside the cafe.  I added 4 more birds to my life list here (this is after 4 yesterday and 2 in Edinburgh). Then we started heading back towards our hotel.

Karl took us down a single lane road into Glen Etive, which ran several miles into the mountains.  The rain coming down the mountains in naturally carved downspouts was so intense, with waterfalls letting off what looked like sheets of smoke half way up the mountains.  It was almost unnatural how the water was just streaming down the mountains and joining with the small stream that was powering down towards the loch and onwards to the sea.  It was a lot of water.  That was an understatement.  We stopped to shoot the rapids which was great because I’m still practicing my long exposure photography.  We lasted a few minutes until the rain powered up again, so then we packed back up into the vans and off we went again.

We passed a bothy, a small cottage that is used by trekkers and hikers for a bit of respite as they make their way through the highlands.  I’d seen it in photographs and knew it was the iconic shot of the wee white cottage against the backdrop of the mountains.  The scale of it is just hard to describe.  But it was raining too hard to stop.   Fortunately we passed a similar cottage a bit further on and stopped there because the rain had pressed pause again.  I got some good shots, since I’d rectified my camera settings and used my tripod.  So the last shots of the day were good ones.

Dinner tonight was leek and potato soup, which was really good, hot and a bit of a kick; felt good on my throat.  The main was salmon, cod and coley fishcakes, which were wonderful with big chunks of potato in them and topped with a tomato salsa.  And the dessert was Eton mess.  Right there my day turned around 10000%.  It was quite good (although I still give the edge to Chef Luis at the Sunset Marquis!).  Tonight instead of a G&T I had Inch’s Apple Cider which is a local seasonal hard cider.

We’re all up early tomorrow to hopefully shoot sunrise here on the bay outside our hotel.  We move on to Isle of Skye tomorrow too, so hopefully Noah can work some magic and dry things out.  In the meantime I’m flipping my shoes again on the radiator. Hopefully they’ll dry out by morning!

Tested by the elements

Sunday, November 1

What an amazing night’s sleep!  It was so quiet here it was almost deafening, but for the downpours that hit overnight and tapped me awake on the roof windows.

We met at 7:45 for breakfast.  It was continental with hot and cold options.  I went for yogurt with berry compote, two small croissants with jelly and marmalade and OJ and coffee.  That lasted me a few hours until I found some Scottish gin fudge which tided me over until lunch (sooooo good, believe it or not!)

We were really challenged by the rain this morning.  All the weather apps kept telling us a break was coming and it would eventually stop for the day, but that stopping point was elusive.  And we did have some clear patches, but they seemed to hit while we were engrossed in ‘fallback rainy day activities’ or lunch.  Our timing was just off.

It stopped raining so we decided to visit Signal Rock which was an area where the clans would light a fire on the mountain to alert the highlanders when an invasion was going to happen.  It is a nice nook at the foot of a few overlapping mountains and a stream running through it.  The area however has gotten so much rain in the last couple of weeks that the stream is practically a river, and a loud one at that.  It was a bit of a slippery scramble through some thicket, mud, and rocks but we all found our footing right at the river’s edge just in time for the rain to kick in again, so then it became and effort of putting rain gear on our cameras, pulling up hoods and securing them against the wind.  I didn’t love the shots I was getting or the fact that my gear was getting soaked, so I headed back into the trees where it was less wet and found a footbridge over the river that I took some shots at.  By then everyone else was ready to head back to the vans and lunch, so off we went.

Karl has a few “rainy day” activities in his back pocket in the event that it’s just too bad to be out at all.  One of those is the Glencoe Cultural Center.  This was a good stop because it explained that the area is actually a caldera and then covered its often sordid history, which includes locals fighting off the English as well as intra-clan battles.  There was also a thatched cottage to visit and a ton of local birds that I had fun identifying with the Merlin app and trying to photograph.  

After our time here we went to Karl’s cafe and gift shop for lunch.  I had no expectations for lunch but I was simply blown away.  I had a flatbread with vegetarian haggis, Brie and onion jelly that was just fabulous, and incredibly filling.  I was really impressed how good it was.  We noticed though that while we were eating, the skies were brightening and things were drying out.  But we were committed to lunch and there was no rushing the group at this point.

By the time we left lunch it was coming down again.  And when I say raining and “coming down”, I mean it in not a friendly, gentle shower way (which I think we’d all be fine in).  This rain was bucketing down.  There was some discussion about what we’d do next but Karl thought we should head to Castle Stalker ahead of sunset with the hopes that we might more brightening and dry air by then.  So off we went.

We arrived and it was indeed dry but overcast.  No worries, we gathered our gear and headed to the beach.  The castle is on a tiny island out in the bay with the mountains of the highlands behind it and, hopefully, the sun setting just to the left of it.  It stayed dry for about 20 minutes while we got to move around, shoot lower to the water and then it started to rain again and with the wind it was blowing directly at us and into our lenses.  We all turned our backs and protected the lens and the rain passed quickly.

Then a crack in the clouds started right where we guessed the sun might be.  Don got excited that we might see sunset after all.  The sun’s rays streamed out of the crack and it was almost as if the late autumn sun was still warm enough to burn off more of the clouds.  We were all shooting like mad, getting the light and its reflection off the water as best we could.  And this brightness lasted all of 3 minutes when the sun dipped below another deck of clouds and the rain picked up again.  It looked like it might clear up again but we all headed back to the vans to get warm and dry and wait it out.  In the end, it only got darker so we headed back to the hotel.  All told though, it was a really spectacular sight.  And I got to try some black and white photography that I hope turns out well.

I took a hot bath and hung anything wet on either the towel warmer in the bathroom or the radiator in my room.  Nothing was too soaked so it all dried quickly.  I am really happy that I have my lined rain pants and the waterproof shoes because I think if I was soaked through I’d be really miserable. 

Dinner tonight was a superfood salad (quinoa, butternut squash, spinach, cranberries and a yogurt dressing), the same hake entree as last night (the other choice was pork or a garlic gnocchi, and I didn’t think garlic in a van all day tomorrow was a nice choice!) and sticky toffee pudding for dessert.  It was all really good.  Tonight I tried the 1881 Rafters gin in a martini.  It was billed as a smoky gin and I have to say I really didn’t like it.  I didn’t finish it and replaced it with the 1881 Rhubarb and Rose gin, which was a nice upgrade.  

Don and Karl had wanted to take us to a pub for some music tonight but all of us are tired and still not warmed up yet so it was off to bed instead.  Karl says tomorrow is a “biblical washout” as it’s officially the rest of Melissa hitting here, so he’s digging up some more rainy day stuff for us.