{"id":3156,"date":"2016-10-04T08:49:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T07:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=3156"},"modified":"2016-10-04T15:19:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T14:19:35","slug":"day-3-north-coast-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=3156","title":{"rendered":"Day 3: North Coast 500"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"northcoast500logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Applecross Campsite<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was heavy rain overnight, making quite a noise in the van, but when Poppy decided it was time to get up (6.45 am) the sky was clear with the promise of some fine weather.<\/p>\n

As we explored a track beside the old farm buildings we had an exciting encounter – two red deer stags, just a few\u00a0yards away.\u00a0 Poppy did not know what to make of them, and the two young gentlemen trotted down the edge of the deer fence, not much concerned.\u00a0 Again, no camera with me, and the quick snaps I took with my phone in the half dark produced only fuzzy pictures.<\/p>\n

\"2016-09-23-06-57-18\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"2016-09-23-06-58-23\"<\/a>Mary and I decided to make an early start and explored two restored\u00a0Hebridean barns, an excavated broch and a thatched round house – not bad going within a couple of hundred yards of the campsite.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The campsite with the excavated broch on the left<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After that we had a lovely walk along a marked path through old hazel woods at Carnach.\u00a0 (Carnach means a stony place, or one bounded by cairns, and there certainly were lots of moss covered stones about.)\u00a0 The path eventually led us down to the shore road.\u00a0 The dogs loved the wood, exploring and running free.\u00a0 They certainly needed that after two long days in the van.<\/p>\n

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\"2016-09-23-09-43-50\"<\/a>Across the water we could see the island of Raasay\u00a0which we had visited many years\u00a0before.\u00a0The flat topped hill called Dun Caan stood out distinctly.\u00a0\u00a0On that visit to Raasay\u00a0I had copied James Boswsell who had climbed it during his tour of the Highlands with Dr Johnston in 1773 and “danced a jig” on the top.\u00a0\u00a0 We had looked across the same stretch of water, and eventually decided we were looking at Applecross in the bright sunlight.\u00a0\u00a0 Now here we were looking back the other way, though hardly in sunshine.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>
Looking over to Raasay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sadly that was the only outing.\u00a0 We had hoped to visit the Heritage Centre, but after lunch the rain came on and the wind blew up and we were confined to the van.\u00a0 But at least we had that wonderful morning.
\n\"2016-09-24-09-35-27\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the rain poured down and the gales shook the van we wondered if we would have to abandon our road trip.\u00a0The weather forecast predicted more storms to come. \u00a0I did not fancy tackling the Bealach again\u00a0in such bad weather and we had no idea what the coast road was like.<\/p>\n

\"2016-09-24-08-23-39\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Applecross Campsite There was heavy rain overnight, making quite a noise in the van, but when Poppy decided it was time to get up (6.45 am) the sky was clear with the promise of some fine weather. As we explored a track beside the old farm buildings we had an exciting encounter – two red…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-coast-500"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3156"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3193,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3156\/revisions\/3193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}