After yesterday evening’s satnav shenanigans it was good to be out early on the cliff top at Strathy Point as the first fingers of sunlight illuminated the North Atlantic breakers rolling in from the distant Orkney islands. The B&B owners’ bloodhound puppy Bramble, who I befriended yesterday evening is in tow, trying to root out still sleeping rabbits from their burrows.
The day warms fast as we head further west towards Cape Wrath and the Pentland Firth, so much so that by mid-morning we are cutting off sweat shirt sleeves and jeans’ legs and investing in sun tan lotion (24 degrees in the far reaches of September was not in the packing script). Past the village of Bettyshill, as we approach the sea loch of Eriboll, the scenery around every turn is so beautiful that we could literally have stopped every couple of minutes to take it in, and finally do so on the cliff above one of the loch’s white sand beaches, where we find our first cup of (what should have been iced) tea, at a small croft café. This deep water loch has a storied naval history as a sheltered anchorage, although ‘sheltered’ is a relative term as its nickname ‘Lock ‘orrible’ was coined by British servicemen stationed there, due to frequent inclement weather!
But apparently we’ve seen nothing yet, as the scenic wonders multiply further southwest on what is reputed justifiably to be the most stunning stretch of blacktop in these islands, through rocky glens and mountain peaks to Loch Kylesku with its fancy waterside hostelry. Sadly, even a late lunch is out of the question as we are still working our way through this morning’s ‘full Scottish’ of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. As it’s in the general direction of our bed at Lochinver tonight, we detour off the main drag on a whim down the tiny B road which skirts Eddrachillis Bay, a Hibernian facsimile for the North Island of New Zealand’s gorgeous Coromandel Peninsular. Here we take in the views with cold beers on the Drumbeg Village store’s terrace.
Branching off to visit the lighthouse at Stoer Head and hike to the nearby sandstone sea stack of the Old Man at Stoer, which look out across the Minch to the Western Isles, we wonder at the patience of the locals as this sinuous, even narrower ribbon of tarmac seems to have a ‘passing place’ every 30 metres and took us two hours to navigate before finally disgorging us at the little fishing port of Lochinver.
High on the blur of beauty we have experienced we are brought down to earth with a bump by the compactness of our ‘luxury ensuite bedroom’ and even more so at having to dump our bags and charge off into town for dinner, as the restaurant our hosts have recommended closes at 7pm; (no wonder America’s ‘Snowbirds’ are so comfortable here in the summer, it’s that same ‘5pm rush’ that caters for them in the sunbelt states)!
Fortunately we have not performed amputations on all our clothing, as we wake to grey skies this morning, and after yesterday’s natural wonders it was a shock after passing the romantic ruins of Ardvreck Castle on Loch Assynt, to find ourselves in the twee tartan and shortbread store-scape of Ullapool. Its best feature seems to be the ferry to the evocatively named Summer Isles archipelago in the Inner Hebrides, which we make a mental note to visit on another trip. By the time we reached Gairloch it was even drizzling, but our mood lifted as we took another massive detour along the south coast of Loch Maree before turning westwards towards sunshine and clearing skies. We follow the shoreline of Loch Torridon through a mountainous glen, past the massive seven peaked Beinn Eighe and the cone of Beinn Liathach, which looks to be an extinct volcano that blew out its caldera aeons ago. This is the real Wester Ross, not ‘Game of Thrones’ CGI’d version.
At the far end of the glen we enjoy a very special afternoon tea in the lap of luxury at the gothic pile of the Torridon Hotel with a gaggle of wealthy New York socialites discussing how they’ve bagged their ‘10.000 steps’ that day and the only Tesla supercharger unit we’ve seen this side of the border in the car park. The staff were utterly charming to us and if I hadn’t already booked a rather interesting hilltop B&B above the harbour at Badachro, with its own boutique gin distillery, we could happily have stayed put and enjoyed the view of the Highland cattle contentedly chewing the pasture through the picture windows, before repairing for a dram to the magnificently stocked bar. Sabrina gives me a rather wistful look as we retrace our steps but soon cheers up as we savour drinks on a waterside terrace, as golden evening light reflects on mustard coloured kelp dotted all around a pocket-sized harbour, followed by the meal of the trip so far.
Steamed Lobster with Mornay Sauce: Serves 3
I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to enjoy some of Scotland’s justly famed shellfish, but these lobsters prepared in a simple Mornay sauce were well worth the wait.
3 1lb lobsters, steamed and cut in half
Mornay sauce:
4 tbsp butter
1/2 cup flour
2/3 cup white wine
1 1/3 cup milk
1 cup gouda cheese, grated
2 tsp Dijon mustard
4 tbsp chives, chopped
Remove the meat from the lobsters and cut into bite sized pieces. To make the sauce, heat the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, cook for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the milk all at once and whisk until there are no lumps. Return to the heat, add the wine; whisk to combine, cook until the sauce thickens, that is when the sauce coats the back of a wooden spoon. Add the nutmeg, mustard, stir to combine; then add the cheese. Mix the lobster meat with the sauce and the chives, return the meat to the shells and place under the broiler until it has browned.
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As a child I spent a week every summer staying at the Bettyhill Hotel by night and days playing on the banks of the Naver, while my parents fished. I used to look forward immensely to the moment they would lay down their rods and break for lunch - without fail, a white paper bag provided by the hotel containing crisps, a boiled egg, an apple, a Penguin biscuit and the most wonderfully fresh, large, white, flour-dusted bap filled with thick slabs of succulent ham and lashings of butter my brother and I had helped make the night before in the hotel's butter churn. While massively mundane compared with your lobster feast, the joy of clutching my daily bap in both hands and biting into its salty, buttery richness stays with me to this day!
Clearly I have missed out on this part of our beautiful country.