Big Country

I love it when the landscape starts to get big n' impressive. this is Glen Uladal, with the immense Sron Uladal looming in the right there. We'd had lunch in the boulder field underneath its massive overhang a little while before, somehow managing to avoid most of the rain showers around, and finding weird pockets where the winds eased off almost completely.

We had distant Golden Eagles and Deer for company at times, but this was all about the immense scale of everything surrounding us as we headed down what used to be (still is?) a deer stalkers' path. At the start we met with a guy from the Hebridean Mink Project and had a brief chat about the work they've been doing for the last six and a half years. He was very much of the opinion that mink are a beautiful animal, but man is to blame for the problems they have brought. Turns out there were a couple of mink farms in Lewis, and escapees, together with possible releases as mink farming drew to a close, saw the animal proliferate. I those six and a half years they've trapped 1,700 of the wee things. Sad, but necessary for so much of the rest of the area's wildlife.