We Didnae Find The Beastie!

The weather this morning was abysmal.  It it had been pouring with rain all night and was still raining hard when we set off this morning.

First stop was Aldi for a good stock up on food, the wine supplies are holding up well, as we bought a lot in France.

We didn't really have a look around Inverness as the weather wasn't conducive to walking around, so we just headed off down the eastern side of Loch Ness.

We stopped for lunch in a lay-by, Bombo was scanning for the beastie ...

The road down the Eastern side is basically one track with passing places every few hundred metres. Not long after the shot below was taken we had a serious brown trouser moment.
We were following a French  plated touring motorbike with a couple of people on it in full wet weather gear. The road is pretty straight, they were riding quite slowly and I soon caught them up.   I followed them for a couple of miles so I was sure he could see me.  I could see his face in his bike mirrors so he must have been able to see a bloody great motorhome behind him.  I was saying to Elaine 'I wonder why he doesn't pull over and let me pass' (as I and other drivers had been doing when someone comes up behind you).  Once again I was assuming that he had seen me. Eventually he pulled to the left at a passing spot, only trouble was that it turned out wasn't pulling over to let me pass he was doing a U Turn!!!!  I had no time to brake I just swerved to the right absolutely sure we were going to smash into the side of him when he suddenly noticed us and pulled back to the left, I missed him by an fag paper! I have been riding bikes since I was 17 and would know when someone was behind let alone not checking before doing a U Turn, but I still blame myself for assuming that he had seen me, and perhaps given him a blast on the horn before passing him…live and learn and all that!

The weather stayed gloomy and we were getting rather fed up with the lack of sunshine, we haven't seen the sun for about 4 days and Elaine saod she is getting rickets!

These mist-covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be……

Suddenly out of the gloom a bloody great sea creature sailing boat appeared.

We had reached Port Augustus and some boats were going up through the locks...

The crew were singing sea shanties as the lock filled, they were on there way from Denmark to Brixham in Devon ...

We video-ed them singing (it should be here) ...

They are most impressive locks and we are so glad that we had the chance to see them in action ...

There were five boats in the next lock up ...

After all the excitement we thought we better have a soothing ale. The dogs were very attentive cos the barman was feeding them cheese biscuits ...

We headed back along the western side of the lock which is a much busier A road.  We hadn't been going long when we spotted some motorhomes parked up in a community centre car park, this will do nicely we said, a free night ...

We are moored up at Invermoriston. After a yummy fish pie dinner we went for a walk through the woods. We came across a summer house with an unlocked door so we went inside and took these pics of the raging river below, it was so noisy ...

A bit further up was a bridge long since abandoned, the plaque said the builder was none other than Thomas Telford.  The pics are a strange colour because it is just about 22.00 ...

The shorts are still being worn, I refuse to believe that summer has gone!

We have decided though that we will not go right up to John o' Groats as planned as this awful weather showing no sign of abating. We will now go a little further north before heading over to The Isle of Skye.