Mountains and more mountains
Wednesday 9th April 2008Plog, Day Three. Woke up this morning and cooked up a big fry up for breakfast while still in my pyjamas. Terrible mistake, I’m in my PJs now as I write this and I can still smell bacon frying!The kids seemed a bit brighter today and we dragged them out to see the waterfall. Once he got started jasper was unstoppable and wanted to keep going. We went back to the van and set off. The plan today, Kyle of Lochalsh and ready for the Isle of Skye.Ella suffers from car sickness, it’s a law pf physics that what goes down comes back upagain within about 30 minutes, especially if she’s in the back on winding roads; consequently she sat up the front with me where she travels much better.We drove along the Highland Way from Craiglarich to Fort William and Ella kept issuing instructions to pull over and take photos of this mountain and that mountain. It was genuinely stunning scenery, blue skies, rolling meadows with snow capped mountains. We even saw deer at one stop.
Road kill in waiting….By Fort William the kids were ready to stop though, so we walked the streets, made up our mind what we’d do for the afternoon and had lunch. We decided to head for Kyle where we would stop for the night and take the bridge to Skye tomorrow. Ten minutes out of Fort William, Ella was sick and I pulled over in a hurry – have I said how much I love travelling with running water, clean clothes, etc?The traffic was particularly bad, really buffetting the van around more than normal and I realised, when I wanted to go, that the front was on the verge but the rear was still hanging into the road. Six metre vans need more room.The scenery continued to be sensational, but by now I think we were starting to acclimatise, as we didn’t have to photograph EVERY mountain we saw.
Jasper did love sleeping as we droveJasper snoozed and then when he woke up, sat next to Ella looking out the front reading all the road signs. Before every corner (and there are a lot of them) there is a ‘slow’ sign.. we spent about 20 minutes driving along with me counting down ‘Ready’, ‘Steady’ and Ella and Jasper shouting SLOW DAD as we passed over the writing.They were both in good spirits and Jasper wanted to climb a mountain, so we decided to stop at Morvich, 16 miles short of Kyle in a wonderful park nestled in a valley beside several mountains.
A walk along a river heading to the mountains.We geared up and set off for a short hike along the valley next to the creek, climbed a hill about 50 metres (talked Jasper out of continuing on the next 400 – 500 metres up the mountain…”c’mon Dad, there’s more!”….) and sat eating fruit on a rock enjoying the view. It was one of those perfect family moments, everyone happy and at peace. The kids really are starting to have a great time, although they don’t quite get why we keep moving on (maybe there’s a lesson in that). They aren’t used to the idea of a driving holiday yet.Finally they are looking up, and after the excitement of the first couple of days, being in the van is no longer better than being outside, exploring, and in Jasper’s case tramping through mud so deep you lose your boot!
Getting stuck in the mud.