{"id":3172,"date":"2016-10-04T09:33:33","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T08:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=3172"},"modified":"2016-10-06T09:18:42","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T08:18:42","slug":"day-4-north-coast-500","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=3172","title":{"rendered":"Day 4: North Coast 500"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Applecross to Ardmair Point\u00a0\u00a0 122\u00a0Miles\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Total:\u00a0 212\u00a0Miles<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was still raining a little when Poppy and I were out for our early morning constitutional, but the wind had dropped, the clouds seemed to be lifting and things looked a bit more positive.<\/p>\n

The burn beside the campsite was in spate, little wonder after the rain there had been over night.<\/p>\n

\"2016-09-24-09-22-53\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What would we do today?\u00a0\u00a0In the end we decided to go on and to tackle the coastal road,\u00a0 It was only constructed in the 1970s.\u00a0 Before that the only land route to Applecross was over the Bealach na Ba.\u00a0<\/em> No wonder the area was described as the most remote parish in Scotland.\u00a0 As it turned out, \u00a0the coastal road, though much longer, is a fine road, with a good surface and plenty of passing places.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The old church at Clanach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Before we finally said farewell to Applecross we paid a quick visit to the old church and graveyard at Clachan.\u00a0 This was the site of the original settlement by the Irish monk, Maelrubha in 671AD.\u00a0 He declared that his monastery and the area round it was a place of sanctuary. The Gaelic name for Applecross is A’ Chomraich<\/em> which means ‘The Sanctuary’.\u00a0 Corruptions of Maelrubha’s name can be found\u00a0in Loch Maree further north and strangely, in St\u00a0Rufus in Keith in Banffshire.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is said that St Maelruhba is buried here in the graveyard at Carnach.\u00a0 Sadly the nearby Heritage Centre did not open until the afternoon so a visit here will have to await another visit.<\/p>\n

\"Applecross<\/a>
Applecross from Carnach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a pleasant drive along the coast, with improving weather and fine views of Raasay emerging from the mist.<\/p>\n

\"Loch<\/a>
Loch Torridon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next stop on the way north was Torridon, our first visit here, a dramatic and spectacular\u00a0area with the high mountains erupting from the loch.\u00a0 Just time for a quick lunch at the shop\/post office\/caf\u00e9\u00a0and a short dog walk along the shore of Loch Torridon before we pointed our noses north again.<\/p>\n

\"Torridon\"<\/a>
Torridon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It seemed wrong to just keep driving through all this beautiful countryside but our eyes were set further north and we had visited this area before:\u00a0 Loch Maree, Gairloch, Poolewe and Ullapool.<\/p>\n

\"Loch<\/a>
Loch Maree taken in 2003<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was while fuelling up at Ullapool that I heard how bad the weather had been here the previous day with the Stornoway ferry cancelled.\u00a0 But the weather was fair now, with just some occasional showers.\u00a0 So on we went the few miles to our overnight stopping place, Ardmair Point.\u00a0 This was a quiet, friendly place and we parked our van pointing out to the view over Loch Broom.<\/p>\n

\"~Armair<\/a>
Ardmair Point<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sun came out and gave us a spectacular sunset.\u00a0 All the campers seemed to be out on the beach, clutching cameras, phones, iPads, recording the orange colours.<\/p>\n

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\"img_8115\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier we had watched the Lewis Ferry making its way to Ullapool – a day late perhaps?<\/p>\n

\"Capturing<\/a>
Capturing the Lewis Ferry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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There are more pictures of our road trip along the NC 500 on my Flickr page<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Applecross to Ardmair Point\u00a0\u00a0 122\u00a0Miles\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Total:\u00a0 212\u00a0Miles It was still raining a little when Poppy and I were out for our early morning constitutional, but the wind had dropped, the clouds seemed to be lifting and things looked a bit more positive. The burn beside the campsite was in spate, little wonder after the rain…<\/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-3172","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\/3172","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=3172"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3299,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3172\/revisions\/3299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}