Dawn in Durness, at the most north-westerly point on the UK main road network.
Dawn in Durness, at the most north-westerly point on the UK main road network. Dinner was langoustines in a fish café in Balnakeil Craft village, the rebirth of a sixties hippie village built in wartime concrete prefabs. Balnakeil beach is a glorious sandy strand, with seabirds – I saw guillemots, terns and gulls - and a view of Cape Wrath, this morning looking as dark as its reputation.
My journey here from Heathrow via Inverness airport was a journey back from metropolitan civilisation that was paralleled by the increasing age of the rocks: Devonian sedimentary rocks on the banks of the Moray Firth then, the metamorphic rocks known as Moine schists of the Strath Naver, a high moorland valley and pass. Lots of kettle-holes, the depressions formed as the glaciers retreated. I crossed Loch Eriboll, one of the deepest lochs, and a major thrust fault line known as the Moine Thrust, which is the result of earth movements at the end of the Silurian Age, over 400 million years ago. Rising out of the western side is Lewisian Gneiss rock, one of the oldest rocks at the surface anywhere in Europe, a so-called basement rock dating back 1,400-2,700 million years.
Motorbikers outnumbering cyclists, mostly on big touring bikes but the most colourful so far have been a group out from Inverness on scooters as a pre-stag party event, the main man wearing the superman tights.