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Sunday 2nd August 2009 - weather: cloudy and dry with prolonged sunny spells.
I hear that Caberfeidh is getting a bit restless on the ship's bridge at having to read too much inane banter and not enough in the way of good old hill walking reportage. So here goes with a little low level, short sharp coastal walk up on the Gairloch peninsula.
We had booked into the accomodation in Kinlochewe for a week on the Saturday evening. Torridon beckoned again and the new Scarpas were still gleeming. I was raring to get them pressed into immediate action on Alligin or Liathach but my wife hadn't been out on the hills since a wee jaunt to Skye in early May so we decided to break both her and the new boots in gently with a wee coastal walk from the lighthouse at Rua Reidh point.
We drove up through Gairloch (stopping first at Grudie Bridge to gaze across Loch Maree at what is in my opinion one of the finest views in Scotland, the mighty north western face of Slioch, rekindling memories of last summer's ascent) and then on past the extremely busy campsite at Big Sand up to the hamlet of Melvaig. There is a parking area here but it is still a good way short of the point so we decided to take a gamble with the old Astra's creaking bones and continue along the (almost less than) single-track road to the lighthouse. There is a decent sized parking area a few hundred yards short of the lighthouse, from where a path leads off towards the old jetty and beyond onto the clifftop moorlands.
We headed along towards the jetty, past the large smooth slabs of rock which slope down to the sea and which, according to the leaflet in the visitor's centre in the lighthouse, give the place it's name.
At the old jetty, where in the water you can see the remains of an old trolley and rails that used to be used to pull supplies up to the lighthouse when it was in use, we had lunch while Lucy indulged in her favourite leisure pursuit.
A path then leads over the burn feeding into the sea at the jetty and heads along the coast, climbing slightly initially to gain a sheep path which snakes along the cliff tops and high around inlets, with sea birds shooting the breeze whilst perched atop their sea stacks.
We stuck close to the cliffs while a German couple with two young girls (actually I don't know that they were German, I just kind of got that idea into my head and it stuck) were opting for a route further back from the edge that seemed more direct but looked like it was more of a trudge through the heather. Eventually we caught sight of the beach at Camas Mor, and had views over a series of remote lochans towards the mountains around Ullapool.
We were carrying a battered old 1997 edition of the Rough Guide to Scotland which features some pretty good little walks for this part of the world (as indeed does this site
). One of them suggested carrying on from this point by heading along a track on the near side of the lochans which heads directly south-east down below a steep scarp to the hamlet of Midtown. It looked like an interesting walk, but with only the one car parked back at the lighthouse and the threat of rain now hanging in the air, we decided that that was quite enough for one day, and headed back. Besides, Alligin was on the agenda for tomorrow
and in the meantime, there was a pint of lager in the Badachro Inn with my name on it.