The Boy Who Likes To…

Like a virgin

One of my activities that I took up while walking around Knoydart was to photograph as many manmade structures I could find.

One, which caught me off guard was a statue of Mary. You know, the mother of Jesus. That Mary.

This one was a little tricky to get as it was on the edge of the land right next to the loch. And the only road that went near it was a kilometre or two away from it.

Although on one visit to Inverie I got lucky and we were given a lift back from the most remotest pub, to our hioliday cabin, by boat.

So I got myself ready to get a photo of this statue. I had to see it.
The reason I wanted to see this statue was, not because I was Catholic, but because I had been told this statue was made of plastic.
It had been given the name, The Plastic Mary.
This was genius.

I don’t know why it was stuck by the loch facing inland? Or why it is so far away from any accesible path? Or even why it was made of plastic?

But it was because of all these things that I wanted to get a photo of it.

Where is the Plastic Baby Jebus?

A bridge too far

When walking across the vast emptiness of Scotlands Knoydart, and many other paths in England, one thing a person may encounter is a bridge.

In Knoydart there were many dangerous bridges that I’d have to cross. Life threatening ones. And I’m not making this up. There were actual signs posted near the bridges saying that “users do so at their own risk.”

At times I wished the only danger at bridges was that they homed trolls.

Note; the one foot gap between the edge of the path and first step on bridge.

Someone had thought that balancing a huge rock on the centre slat of the bridge to help people across was somehow a good idea?
And it crossed my mind to jump over the balancing rock, but I feared for putting a new huge hole in the bridge. I didn’t want someone having to move another stone over the new hole.

Nice pic-a-nic

There have been many memorable lunches while on my many walks around England.

One of my favourite was recently while in Scotland. After attempting, and failing, to climb up Mam Barrisdale we took a small break. People say a picture paints a thousand words. So not much else to say.

Incidentally I was heading to behind the ridge of that mountain on the right.

Lucky that I didn’t lean too far forward and right off that cliff.

If you look hard enough you may see some wooly cows in the lake. But more on them soon.

Another photo of me looking for my lunch.

PS I was eating a pear.

A Wee Walk in the Park

My dad had it almost planned out perfect. Day one of are walk would be a stroll to a small hut in the middle of nowhere. Hidden between some moutains. I was told it would be simple.
Day two would be just as easy. An almost complete straight line. Almost meaning that we would have to climb over a mountain. But any birds flying past would think we where going in a straight line.

Half way through day one we had a nice easy stroll. Great weather also. Keeping to the edge of a mountain and above a lake it was a comfortable start. Really nice views. Speaking with my dad about our route it was then I learnt that my dad had only covered 3/4’s of the two day walk. In fact it was half of day one that he had not covered.
We got to a half way point. Ate some sandwiches. Made a quick call to remind the missus to not forget the cans of beer. Then looked at the map for paths.
And carried on looking for paths on the amp.
And we looked more for maps.
I began to think perhaps the designer of maps had ran out of ink and left the maps out. But this idea was the best idea as the map designer had more then enough black ink to draw on all the lines for the cliffs. So plenty of cliffs and not a single path. No wonder my dad had never done this walk.
It then started to rain so we put on our waterproofs and headed off.

An hour or so in to the walk we came across some locals. We were told that there are two ways to get to our destination. Either walk up the waterfall. Or head along the shoreline.

Now there were a few problems with these routes. Firstly the waterfall route. When the direction was given to walk up the waterfall that is exactly what the guy meant. Not up alongside the waterfall, but waking in it and up it. Granted it wasn’t a big waterfall, more like a wide stream with many drops, but it was still steep. With bad weather and one memeber of the team having a bad leg we looked to route two.
Across the shoreline. Sounds easy. Except the tide was in….or it was out. I forget which. It’s the one tha means that there is water about. So along the shoreline meant ‘swimming.’

So deciding to do neither we went half way up the mountain and across it. What should of taken a few hours to walk about 5 miles took a little bit longer.
We zigged and zagged along the side of the mountain. Encoutering cliff edges, trying to climb above them or below them. But not going to low incase we went round a corner and seen there was nothing but water below us.
It was a hard trek. I, on a few times, annoyed my dad by getting very scared while clinging to a rock face by my finger nails and suggesting that we drop are bags, are two guests – remember one had a bad leg – and making a dash for mountain rescue.
For about the hundreth time my dad said “let’s see what is around that corner.” It was starting to get dark and pitching a tent in the dark on the side of a mountain is hard.
Reluctantly we headed around the corner. I was picturing seeing another cliff face heading in to the loch.
But I was over joyed at seeing nothing but the loch bottom. Granted we were still about a mile away from the hut. But atleast I was on the ground. A very slippy and wet rocky ground, but I’d take my chance with walking on pebbles then clinging to a cliff face by my finger tips.
We raced to the hut and arrived about 9 hours after phoning the missus and having travelled about 5 miles.

The hardest thing about day two was just that day one took away all of our strength.
Oh, and it never stopped raining.

As we entered Inverie – a small fishing village 5 miles from our holiday cabin – my dad told about some sign warning of dangers in mountain regions beyond. This sign of course was a little too late. It needed to be placed about 20 miles away.

A good warning, but in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

Some other photos of those two days.