Monday 3rd August 2009 - Total Vauxhall Issue 99, The Road To Applecross and our Scotland Trip in May '09
* * * * * * * * * *
I had never expected there to be such a lack of entries into the blog this year, but due to me being on the road so much with the main job it's meant returning home to Aachen late on a Friday night and heading away again first thing on a Monday morning (sometimes much earlier than I would like to be up and about).
Right now I'm on my summer holidays and strangely enough it's the first real batch of time that I've had to be able to update the website with some of the work I've done over the previous months, mainly from the month of May when myself and Mireille visited Scotland and spent some time around the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Before I get into the Scotland images I just want to show off some of the latest work we've done for Total Vauxhall magazine (issue 99 to be precise). In early June we drove from Aachen to Oschersleben Arena where one of the largest (if not THE largest) Opel events takes place over a 3 day period. With Performance Vauxhall taking place the same weekend at Santa Pod in England it meant that Dougie was tied up there with the mag, and that meant myself and Mireille were to provide the coverage from Oschersleben (words and pics).
Below you will find some small scans of the published article...
The show itself was pretty cool and the standard of cars on show I'd say would have slightly pipped the UK equivalent due to the number of old classic Opels on show in almost pristine condition, something that you will still find in the UK but not in the same numbers as we found in Germany.
So, with the latest magazine work now dealt with we can get on with the holiday we made in Scotland in May...as always this kicked off with the long drive from Aachen, Germany to Calais, France where we boarded the ferry to Dover, England and upon landing in Dover we then made the long drive North to Glasgow in Scotland where we spent the first days at my mum's.
We did a number of day trips to the likes of Loch Lomond, Oban, Inverary etc and then the culmination of the trip was a 2 day drive-a-thon which took us North to the infamous "Road to Applecross" which is best described as being a single track road which winds it's way up and over a small mountain with massive drops down the cliffs normally in play on one side of the narrow road. I'm not trying to put anyone off of visiting and driving the road as it is something you "have" to do if you get the opportunity, but it's certainly not the sort of road you want to get carried away on, patience is the name of the game here as you will often find yourself squeezing into a passing place to let someone else pass by in the other direction (normally holding your breath the whole time as two of your wheels are sitting close to the edge of the cliff).
Looking Down the Road to Applecross
As well as taking photographs we also shot some video of the drive up and down the road which you can find by clicking on the appropriate links below which will take you to the videos I've uploaded onto my youtube account:-
>>> Driving Up The Road to Applecross <<<
>>> Driving Down The Road to Applecross <<<
After we had dared the road to Applecross we continued Northward to one of the most amazing spots you are likely to find on mainland Scotland, the area around Loch Shieldaig and Loch Torridon. Some of the images we shot around this area have had much attention by people wanting to know if the water is indeed the colour it shows up in our photographs, and the answer is definitely a resounding YES. It's something to behold standing on the hills overlooking the lochs in this area of Scotland and watching the blues and greens of the water milling about in the loch below, below is but one example...
Loch Torridon
We stayed the night in a hotel located in the small village of Kyle which is the connecting point of the Skye bridge which takes you over onto the Isle of Skye (which is definitely one of our favourite places to visit in Scotland). We only had a single day to spend on the Isle of Skye so we made the most of our time by getting up early and braving the mist and rain to head onto the Island and South towards the Sound of Sleat before turning West and onwards to Tarskavaig by which time the rain had already eased to a drizzle and the clouds soon broke up to reveal blue skies and suntan weather.
At the Sound of Sleat Approaching Tarskavaig
From Tarskavaig we began to head Northwards until we reached the small village of Ord at which point we changed our direction to begin driving East and back towards the Sound of Sleat once again, after which we would drive North and then West towards Torrin and later on to the likes of Carbost, Struan, Sconser etc to name but a few of our stops. Some of the views that can be found in this Western area of the Isle of Skye are simply amazing, you could spend a whole day just taking pictures in one location and find you only moved a few hundred metres during the entire day, here's a couple of examples...
Carbost Free Kirk Looking Over Loch Harport
Sheep at Loch Bracadale McLeod's Tables
We visited one further place during our single day on the Isle of Skye and I decided to leave it to the end of this blog entry for the simple reason that as far as we're concerned we found the hidden jewel of the island. The location in question is Talisker Bay which when you were to ask most people on the street whether or not they knew of it you would most likely get a response along the lines of "yeah, they make whisky there". It's true that some great whisky comes from Talisker Bay but the location itself is well worth a trip, as due to it's position on the Island it's not the most accessible place to get to so you find much less people there compared with some of the tourist traps you'll find elsewhere on the island. The beach at Talisker Bay may not be the biggest on offer as the top half of the beach is full of large rocks (or even what I would refer to as boulders) and once you've successfully negotiated the 30 or so metres of these you find yourself down on the black and white sand of the beach itself.
Enough talking, here's some of the photographs we took at Talisker Bay to help make you want to visit it yourself...
Here's a full list of the places we visited along the way with links to their seperate pages on the website:-
Mainland Scotland
Ardmucknish Bay Atlantic Bridge Ben Nevis Cairn Field Crinnan Easdale Etive Mhor Glenachullish Glencoe
Inverary Loch Awe Loch Clair Loch Clunie Loch Damh Loch Etive Loch Feochan Loch Garry Loch Kishorn
Loch Long Loch Lundie Loch Tralaig Oban Rest & Be Thankful River Lochy Road To Applecross Shieldaig
Scottish Castles
Isle of Skye
Carbost Loch Dughaill Loch Na Dal Ord Sconser Sound of Sleat
Talisker Bay Tarskavaig Torrin Torvaig
At present I don't have my menu file or master file for making the section buttons for the website with me, so these new sections won't be added to the site menu system until we return to Germany around the middle of August, but can be accessed via the links above (or on the updates page) in the meantime.
* * * * * * * * * *
So that brings us pretty much up to date as far as our May holiday went in Scotland, and with us now in Glasgow until tomorrow morning preparing for our trip North to the Isle of Skye where we begin our Summer Holiday on the outer hebrides of Scotland (Skye, Harris, Lewis, Uists, Benbecula, Eriskay, Barra).
So stay tuned and when we have an internet connection we'll try to upload a few pics from along the way (as well as a bumper installment at the end of it all when we return home again).
Barry & Mireille
* * * * * * * * * *
PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES
2009-04-11 - Some of my favourite recent HDR images from European Cities
2009-03-14 - Multiple Long Exposure Images and Conversion to HDR
2009-01-06 - Images and Blurb from Luxembourg & Germany
2008-10-27 - Lake Superior & Duluth Day Trip
2008-10-23 - Summer 2008 Photography Tour Blog - Part 2
2008-10-22 - Summer 2008 Photography Tour Blog - Part 1
2008-10-20 - Some photos from Minnesota
2008-09-14 - Monaro On Tour Photographs
2008-06-26 - Integration, Supporting the Nation & Happy Anniversary Irmscher
2008-02-28 - Dr Remington Strikes Again and Life In Germany
2008-02-17 - Have I Just Done A Britney?
The images contained in this site are protected by copyright - no copying or use without prior written consent