Neu Reekie

A packed day today, after breakfast we headed to Cocoa Mountain for a bit then saw Evanna off. From there we drove down towards Achiltibuie stopping for sandwiches at the viewpoint overlooking the Kylesku bridge and Quinag on the way down. After a wee poke about there we took the Inverpolly road up to Lochinver. Roz drove that road the first time we visited Assynt and was a wee bit scared by it. This was the first time we’d driven it since and she has a lot more experience on single track roads now so admitted that it wasn’t as intimidating but with loads of blind corners and summits and few passing places she can see why it worried her the first time round.

Once we got to Lochinver we had a look at their Lifeboat station and had a chat with one of their crew. They hava a far bigger patch that we have in Queensferry stretching from Rubha in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, although their last shout took them twenty five miles nort of Cape Wrath into the North Atlantic. Their flank stations are Portree, Stornoway and Stromness so all four stations have a lot of ground to cover. They have fantastic boats for the job though. After a wee wander around Lochinver we stopped at the award winning local pie shop to grab some pies for dinner when we got back up the road.

When we got back we had them then headed out. Roz’s mum had texted us the day before to tell us Neu Reekie were putting on an event in Smoo Cave as part of a tour round small towns and villages of Scotland. As we haven’;t managed to make a single one of their Edinburgh events we reckoned we had to make one up here since we were in the area. We got there  bit after eight and it looked at first like they weren’t showing up, but they arrived after a wee while and there was music, good chat and a very nice Craigellachie 17 year old malt to be had. It was a bit surreal it all happening in Smoo Cave, a place we’ve visited many times before, but a nice evening which was definitely a departure from our usual evenings up here.