Where was Bertie? Mon: near the harbour at Nairn; Tues: Culloden Moor Caravan Club Site (£18.30); Wed & Thurs: Parking area alongside the A832, above Munlochy Bay, just E of Munlochy.
Weather: Mon: Very wet until mid-afternoon; Tues & Thurs: sunny intervals; Wednesday: mainly sunny. Much cooler than last week.
Let me just nip back to Sunday to a small incident I forgot to mention: after arriving in Lossiemouth the first thing we did was to have a cup of tea and watch the world go by. Just as we were finishing up, another motorhome arrived and a few moments later a car alarm started sounding. As is the norm when that happens, we had a little look around the car park to see whose indicators were flashing, assuming it was the recently arrived motorhome, but there were none. The alarm continued. After a short while Mick asked "Is it Bertie?". "It does sound awfully close" I said. Yep, it was us. Given that Bertie's alarm hadn't been armed since the previous day, it was a bit of a mystery. We can only assume that, as Mick had the keyfob in his pocket, he must have accidentally sat on the 'arm' button.
Now fastforward to Monday, when there was a weather warning for rain, and rain it did. Whilst not torrential, it was persistent with large drops, and by the time we drove into Elgin at around 9am some roads were flooded.
We got wet walking into town, enjoyed a greasy-spoon breakfast where we observed that maybe around 20% of customers were abiding by the ongoing Scottish legal requirement to wear face coverings in inside public places. We then got wet walking back to Bertie, before driving him over to National Tyre.
It can be difficult finding a tyre pressure gauge/inflator in an ordinary garage that goes up to 5 bar (some say they do, but after you've put your pound in the slot you discover that they lie), and it had been a disgracefully long time since Bertie's tyres had been checked. All the national chains offer free checks (presumably in the hope that they can spot a defect on some tyres whilst they're at it), but apparently nobody told the staff in the Elgin branch. That said, they didn't refuse, and we came away with the knowledge that Bertie's tyres are still airtight and at the right pressures.
With no clue where we were going next we repaired next door to Asda's car park whilst we decided. Thanks to our morning's slightly random tour of Elgin in general, and supermarkets in particular, we can report that the fuel shortages reported in the media haven't hit this area. Not a queue or closed pump to be seen.
Nairn was our chosen next stop (Mick recalled visiting in 1978 to see 'Grease', which was being shown in Nairn, but not in Elgin, and we walked past on the coast on the TGO Challenge in 2014, but otherwise we'd not been there).
The car park at the harbour houses ten motorhome parking bays, five of which are practically on the beach, although only daytime parking is permitted. We took one of them and accepted the ticket machine's 'Invitation to Pay' (i.e. it's not a mandatory charge).
Looking towards the harbour entrance in Nairn. Second photo of the same subject, but also showing how close Bertie was to the beach.
Our trip into the town was slightly curtailed by rain, but in any case there was nothing there that was grabbing us. The harbour and beach front was a more pleasing place to be.
We didn't breach the Traffic Regulation Order by spending the night in the car park. Instead we drove about 100m away to a legal spot, where we passed a quiet night.
Tuesday
Once it was legal for Bertie to be in the car park again, we moved him back to one of the beach-front spaces, and headed off along the coast for a run. Initially we took the coast path, but where it runs alongside the golf course, Mick had us stop every time there was a golfer nearby about to take a shot. There were a lot of golfers. So, we took to the beach, where the sand was perfectly firm enough for running.
A fine expanse of beach and lots of people using it.
The rest of the morning was frittered away until at a couple of minutes after the earliest arrival time (1300) we arrived at Culloden Moor Caravan Club Site.
It was a lovely sunny, blowy afternoon, so I wasted no time getting our running gear rinsed through and hung out to dry, then we set about frittering the afternoon away.
For me, that involved a bit of planning. Incredibly, I managed to come away on this trip without any non-electronic hill-bagging resources. Most sorely missed is my Marilyn road atlas (the old 2009 road atlas that I've repurposed and mark up with the location of hills I want to visit), but I'd also failed to bring Corbett and Munro guides, my hill-bagging notebook and the Marilyn lists. Careless!
So, whilst we had unlimited electricity I turned to e-resources and settled on a few hills north of Inverness, in an area we've never toured.
The evening was frittered away watching a film. I really must buy a new remote control for Bertie's TV. We've been managing without, but have now realised that when watching a DVD we have no way to pause or fast forward, meaning if we start a film, we have to finish it in one sitting (something I'm not very good at).
Wednesday
The best weather forecast of the week, and sure enough there was a lot of blue in that sky.
Via a quick grocery stop in Inverness (where there is apparently also no fuel shortage - and it was cheap too; pity we didn't need any) to the Black Isle we came, for a 10.5 mile run/walk taking in the highest point of this not-really-an-island. What an endeavour that was! (for my full report Click Here )
Weather: Mon: Very wet until mid-afternoon; Tues & Thurs: sunny intervals; Wednesday: mainly sunny. Much cooler than last week.
Let me just nip back to Sunday to a small incident I forgot to mention: after arriving in Lossiemouth the first thing we did was to have a cup of tea and watch the world go by. Just as we were finishing up, another motorhome arrived and a few moments later a car alarm started sounding. As is the norm when that happens, we had a little look around the car park to see whose indicators were flashing, assuming it was the recently arrived motorhome, but there were none. The alarm continued. After a short while Mick asked "Is it Bertie?". "It does sound awfully close" I said. Yep, it was us. Given that Bertie's alarm hadn't been armed since the previous day, it was a bit of a mystery. We can only assume that, as Mick had the keyfob in his pocket, he must have accidentally sat on the 'arm' button.
Now fastforward to Monday, when there was a weather warning for rain, and rain it did. Whilst not torrential, it was persistent with large drops, and by the time we drove into Elgin at around 9am some roads were flooded.
We got wet walking into town, enjoyed a greasy-spoon breakfast where we observed that maybe around 20% of customers were abiding by the ongoing Scottish legal requirement to wear face coverings in inside public places. We then got wet walking back to Bertie, before driving him over to National Tyre.
It can be difficult finding a tyre pressure gauge/inflator in an ordinary garage that goes up to 5 bar (some say they do, but after you've put your pound in the slot you discover that they lie), and it had been a disgracefully long time since Bertie's tyres had been checked. All the national chains offer free checks (presumably in the hope that they can spot a defect on some tyres whilst they're at it), but apparently nobody told the staff in the Elgin branch. That said, they didn't refuse, and we came away with the knowledge that Bertie's tyres are still airtight and at the right pressures.
With no clue where we were going next we repaired next door to Asda's car park whilst we decided. Thanks to our morning's slightly random tour of Elgin in general, and supermarkets in particular, we can report that the fuel shortages reported in the media haven't hit this area. Not a queue or closed pump to be seen.
Nairn was our chosen next stop (Mick recalled visiting in 1978 to see 'Grease', which was being shown in Nairn, but not in Elgin, and we walked past on the coast on the TGO Challenge in 2014, but otherwise we'd not been there).
The car park at the harbour houses ten motorhome parking bays, five of which are practically on the beach, although only daytime parking is permitted. We took one of them and accepted the ticket machine's 'Invitation to Pay' (i.e. it's not a mandatory charge).
Our trip into the town was slightly curtailed by rain, but in any case there was nothing there that was grabbing us. The harbour and beach front was a more pleasing place to be.
We didn't breach the Traffic Regulation Order by spending the night in the car park. Instead we drove about 100m away to a legal spot, where we passed a quiet night.
Tuesday
Once it was legal for Bertie to be in the car park again, we moved him back to one of the beach-front spaces, and headed off along the coast for a run. Initially we took the coast path, but where it runs alongside the golf course, Mick had us stop every time there was a golfer nearby about to take a shot. There were a lot of golfers. So, we took to the beach, where the sand was perfectly firm enough for running.
The rest of the morning was frittered away until at a couple of minutes after the earliest arrival time (1300) we arrived at Culloden Moor Caravan Club Site.
It was a lovely sunny, blowy afternoon, so I wasted no time getting our running gear rinsed through and hung out to dry, then we set about frittering the afternoon away.
For me, that involved a bit of planning. Incredibly, I managed to come away on this trip without any non-electronic hill-bagging resources. Most sorely missed is my Marilyn road atlas (the old 2009 road atlas that I've repurposed and mark up with the location of hills I want to visit), but I'd also failed to bring Corbett and Munro guides, my hill-bagging notebook and the Marilyn lists. Careless!
So, whilst we had unlimited electricity I turned to e-resources and settled on a few hills north of Inverness, in an area we've never toured.
The evening was frittered away watching a film. I really must buy a new remote control for Bertie's TV. We've been managing without, but have now realised that when watching a DVD we have no way to pause or fast forward, meaning if we start a film, we have to finish it in one sitting (something I'm not very good at).
Wednesday
The best weather forecast of the week, and sure enough there was a lot of blue in that sky.
Via a quick grocery stop in Inverness (where there is apparently also no fuel shortage - and it was cheap too; pity we didn't need any) to the Black Isle we came, for a 10.5 mile run/walk taking in the highest point of this not-really-an-island. What an endeavour that was! (for my full report Click Here )
Taking it in turns to look thoroughly impressed with what we were doing.
Thursday
A better weather day than forecast, allowing me to fit in three small Marilyn hills with only about ten minutes of light rain between them and far more sunshine than expected (full report Click Here ).
We thought we might spend the night in the car park we used for the second hill, which looked an excellent location, until we spotted the informal 'No Overnight Parking' sign (undoubtedly unenforceable, but we decided to abide by the request). It pushed me into getting the third hill done, hoping that we could stay in that car park instead. Alas, no. The same sign was displayed, and far more prominently this time.
Contemplating our options, we decided on returning to the previous night's spot, overlooking Munlochy Bay, as it was only about a 3-mile detour (why not one of the quieter spots on the minor road we'd noted the previous day, given our comments about road noise just that very morning? Purely to save the extra few miles of detour. Once again, it wasn't the best decision.).
View of Munlochy Bay from the parking spot. Pity the lie of the land caused Bertie to face the road, rather than the view.
On Wednesday we were initially the only van there, but by bedtime there were five. On Thursday we again initially had the place to ourselves, but ended up with three neighbours. Other similar places we'd passed on our way to our hills earlier in the day also had four or fives vans in each. And this is at the very end of September. I hate to think what it would have been like in summer, and also know that just a few short years ago we almost always had our parking spots to ourselves. (Incidentally, though: no sign of any rubbish, litter or toilet waste (not even tissues)). When I get onto Friday's post I will have some more heartening news (as well as a bit of a moan) about facilities for motorhomes being improved in these parts.
There are a heck of a lot of Scottish Ms but at the rate you are going you will be making quite an impression. I'm not sure how many Scottish ones I have done but many of the Munros qualify.
ReplyDeleteI think I've been up around 300 Scottish Marilyns, of which around 25 have been this year. With more than 1200 on the list, if I continue at this rate I should have knocked them all off by the time I'm 90. I think I'll leave the sea stacks until last!
DeleteJust checked. Looks like I've done 242 (Scottish.) I use Harold Street. Hill bagging is more user friendly and I would have preferred to use them but was already committed to HS, and then Hill Bagging need you to put in dates of ascent for which I had no record of quite a number of those done many years ago.
ReplyDeleteOne of my lockdown projects was to bring my logs on Hill-Bagging up to date (I was something silly like 4 years behind). I achieved that, and resolved to keep my logs up to date in future.
DeleteI don't think I've logged a single hill since.