The Old Man of Stoer

As the weather was fairly clear, we decided to walk out to Stoer Point, and pay a visit to the Old Man of Stoer. I’m becoming a bit of an old man myself...I retired at the end of July after most of a lifetime in the mental health profession, the last twenty nine of them as a body psychotherapist. I miss some of the remarkable people I worked with over the years, and some lovely colleagues, and I am also really glad to have more time to choose how I spend my days.
We were so busy looking at the old school house and some fine Highland cattle on the way out that I missed the turn off and we ended up on a random circuit of the rather barren and windswept peninsula at Stoer. It wouldn’t be an obvious landscape for a walk if it didn’t offer the most spectacular view both of the Old Man himself (though I am not sure why this stack of rocks has a particular gender assigned to it) and of the fine and characterful mountains of The Assynt.
Starting out at the lighthouse, we were rather irritated to find our peaceful views of the lighthouse and immediate coastline interrupted by the noisy buzzing and whirring of a drone, put up by a keen amateur photographer to shoot aerial views of the lighthouse rock and surroundings. So we headed off towards the old man, looking for the best route across boggy sections of the path. After a mile or so, we were rather dismayed to discover the photographer and his drone were hot on our heels. We decided to slow down, let him catch up and have a gentle chat. It turned out he was ever so nice, said he was “hoping to do some drone photography” but the last thing he wanted to do was interrupt others’ enjoyment of the wilds, he found drone noise rather annoying himself! Having ascertained that he thought he’d need about ten minutes to take his drone pictures, we suggested he go on ahead and we’d have a little break and come on after. So we stopped for a cup of tea and a snack before following on towards the Old Man himself. In the end it turned out that as we followed on the photographer’s path, it led us to a place on the cliffs with some of the best views and we had reason to be thankful to him. Isn’t life like that, sometimes at least!.