Hello, October

Hi, reader

Thanks for checking in with my blog, where the temperature has dropped a few degrees. I'm aware that in my posts I've regularly mentioned the cold (mainly because I've just spent the last 20 years living in Thailand where almost every day is hot and sunny) and the rain (which is always on my mind since the saga of the leaking van roof). However, I'd like to make clear that Scotland has also given me lots of lovely sunshine along the way.

Today I'll tell you about my brief time in Shieldaig (pronounced sheel-dig). Here's a map to show you roughly where I am:

Shieldaig was founded in 1800, originally for the purpose of training seamen to fight against Napoleon. When Napoleon was defeated at Alba, the community found itself a new role as a fishing village. The name Shieldaig is derived from the old Norse Sild-vik, meaning 'herring bay'.

On the public toilets there's a mural of a herring which was made by local children.

Let's look more closely ...

And you can see that each scale of the fish has the handprint and name of one of the children who contributed to the mural.

I booked a table at the Coastal Kitchen bar and restaurant for 6pm, then passed the time with a walk along the loch shore and a phone call to my Mum. My Mum is this blog's #1 fan. Hi, Mum. Hope you've got your iPad working again and can see this post.

I liked this metal sculpture of a ram which was in someone's front garden.

Something I've noticed more the further north I travel is these red public phone boxes. They used to be found everywhere across the UK, but gradually got replaced or removed. Nowadays most of us have smart phones and no need for a public call box. You still see them around, but often repurposed. For example, there's one near Roath Park in Cardiff which is now used as a kind of library/book exchange. That's where I found my copy of The Lovely Bones which I finished reading last week.

I checked and was surprised to find this phone was still working! When I was a lad in the 1940s, it cost 2p to make a three minute call. In this phone box, your call starts with a minimum of 60p.

Back to the Coastal Kitchen for dinner. It's a lovely restaurant and although they specialize in local seafood, they also have an impressive range of vegetarian and vegan food. I went for this spicy vegan burger, chips, salad garnish and a bottle of ginger ale. Loved it. 

I was able to park my van right on the shore of Loch Shieldaig, looking across at Shieldaig Island (not much variety in place names here). I went out for a walk at about 9pm (to get my daily steps up to 10,000) and I was struck by how silent everything was. There wasn't any noise from the wind, water, traffic, people, animals, birds, insects. I can't remember the last time I experienced such quiet. I stood at the Lochside for a while enjoying the silence and looking up at the sky which was cloudless and full of stars. 

Here's my view in the morning as my porridge was cooking. I've been really lucky to find parking places right next to amazing views for most of my stops.

And then I was on my way again, heading for Ullapool. The road was amazing and a pleasure to drive along after that stressful journey to Applecross yesterday. There was even a little rainbow. 

See you next time. Thanks for reading,

Brian

Commenting

A friend messaged me on FB today to say he's tried commenting several times but the Blogger platform won't let him. Seems like some people can comment and others can't. I've no idea why, but I saw an online article suggesting users accessing the blog via Safari have to have 'prevent cross-site tracking' unchecked in settings.