The Wonders of Scotland

[DaveF]

John Lennon... crashed his car driving round Loch Eriboll

Is your pic the very place?

[Luke]

No, but it is quite a twisty road, and it did seem to go on forever....

[DaveF]

No, but it is quite a twisty road, and it did seem to go on forever....

Ah - and did you take the picture on a wild and windy night?

[Luke]

I did indeed!

[Elgarian Redux]

Happy birthday! Have a great day!

Thank you. It's been pretty good so far: I've been swept away by my first experience of the singing of Anna Moffo, for a start.

[Elgarian Redux]

The Ullapool view is taken from the harbour, looking roughly south along Loch Broom.

Ardmair Bay is a couple of miles north of Ullapool, where we stayed several times in a cottage. It makes a sort of giant natural amphitheatre - a great place to play guitar on the shore, looking out to sea.

[Luke]

Lovely. I remember driving through/past it, it's (yet another) stunning location, as you say.

[Luke]

Ah - and did you take the picture on a wild and windy night?

I should elaborate a little - as part of an exceptionally gruelling (but beautiful) day of driving I drove from Mendelssohn's Oban southward, in the quickly gathering gloom and storm, to the road which seems to have lain behind Macca's thinking when he conceived of The Long and Winding Road. (Herein: the LWR.) Rather less romantically put, it is the B842, which runs saucily down the inner leg of the Kintyre peninsula towards his Scottish retreat. I didn't get all the way there - it was, as you rightly guessed, a wild and windy night, and it was one of the longest days driving I have ever done, having started waking in a harbour carpark on Skye, from where I had taken an early ferry through the fog back to the mainland, then stopped for a bit o'Bax at Morar, then driven all the twisting west coast south of that point to Ardnamurchan where I took a long, long trip up its arduous single track road to the end of the lonely peninsula (a Judith Weir destination) and back, then through the mountains to Loch Linnhe, then taken another ferry at Corran, then driven on to Oban - passing, out of the blue and delightfully, this favourite sight:

From Oban to Kintyre is another long drive, and so I was, to put it bluntly, knackered.*

So the truth is (confession time!) I stopped and turned back after I had driven a few miles on the LWR itself. And in fact the picture was taken a few yards before I actually joined the LWR, in case I didn't see any more fortuitous road signs like this one! (I didn't.)

*I drove on and on afterwards, too, back up Kintyre, along Loch Fyne, through the mountains to Loch Lomond, then to Glasgow for a final destination, and then bombing it down the motorway, back into England, stopping at about 1 a.m. to sleep as best I could in the tempest-lashed car park of Tebay Services What a day that was!

[Elgarian Redux]

Stack Pollaidh (in the middle)

[Luke]

Great! I took some similar photos, from the same viewpoint (approximately) but yours is much better! Very striking mountain!

[Elgarian Redux]

Great! I took some similar photos, from the same viewpoint (approximately) but yours is much better! Very striking mountain!

I think it must be a much-photographed view, by travellers along the A835. The quality of the view is pretty much in the hands of the weather, don't you think?

[Elgarian Redux]

Changing moods at Ardmair Bay:

[Luke]

Wow, these are beautiful

[JBS]

Not from me. It's my birthday today and we're off out for coffee and a crossword puzzle.

Co-là-breith math!

[JBS]

Correct (well, he sailed from Oban, but you're right about the sketch). Not only that, he drew it from exactly where I took this photo. I drove round till I found it. The sketch dates from the day he wrote a letter home which contains the first ideas for 'Fingal's Cave' - i.e., the day before he actually went to Fingal's Cave.


Well, that'll be John Lennon: it was where he went on holiday as a kid (and where he took Yoko as an adult - he crashed his car driving round Loch Eriboll which rather ruined things). I stopped briefly in Durness on my night drive along the north coast - it's where the road simply turns left, and now you're heading south! -  and I took a photo of the John Lennon Memorial Garden. Originally my book was going to have a few sections on various pop/rock things (Beatles, Pink Floyd, Nick Drake a couple more) but I took them out, not without having done the work. And in fact my no.27 is VERY closely linked to your Durness fact. There's a clue in the photo.


     Yes, I was questioning myself too, but I took the plunge.... wrong term given the sheer drops!!

Ah, I was expecting a true
currac an duine mhairbh.
At the very least, the place where Richard Allen became a one-armed drummer.

[Elgarian Redux]

Co-là-breith math!

Tapadh leat!

(No, I don't speak gaelic, and had to use a Google cheat!)

[Elgarian Redux]

One more Ardmair Bay mood:

[Luke]

Very atmospheric!

[Karl Henning]

Something frankly ridiculous (as against all these sublime photos)... the Firesign Theatre's first Sherlock Holmes parody, "By the light of the Silvery," (a live show at the Magic Mushroom) has a Scottish astronomer stealing the moon (for a day or two at first, then he got bolder and bolder.) Do you realize what this means, Watson? Today, a million babies were born with their sun in Sagittarius and their moon in Glasgow!

[Le Buisson Ardent]

One more Ardmair Bay mood:

Like many of @Luke's photos (and your own as well), this particular photo is album cover worthy!