Blue Skies, Sunshine

Light drizzle in Inverness  vanished when we departed that fair city. it should have taken us an hour to drive to Croick up Strathcarron but it took twice that stopping to take photos. 

The gorse is brilliantly in bloom, bright yellow and smells like coconut!

The church at Croick was a place of refuge for the people of Strathcarron after they were brutally evicted from their homes during the Highland Clearances in the mid-1800s. They did not take shelter within the church but only beneath the gabled ends and they scratched names and messages into the glass. A poignant setting. Within 100 meters of the churchyard is the remains of a broch wherein another era's people found shelter.

Next to Dunrobin Castle, home of the Dukes of Sutherland, some of the landlords who decided that sheep were more profitable than the tenants who'd farmed the land for generations. A stark turnaround to see how the other half lived, still a lovely home in a beautiful setting.

 Piping Busker at Dunrobin.

Next we traveled waaay back in time, 5th to 8th century A.D., to the standing stones at Achavanich. They are not tall but have two unusual qualities: 1) the edges of the stones rather than the faces are oriented toward the center, and 2) the stones are arranged in a horseshoe rather than a circle, one of only two such in Great Britain. They overlook a small, remote loch in the gentle valley of heathered hills.

Tomorrow will be as far north as we go--to the main island of Orkney. We won't have the sites to ourselves there, but they are magnificent and can be shared (though I'm certain I will be a little annoyed...