Loch Rannoch

Bumpy waters

Hubby dear and I have just had our annual week up at Loch Rannoch. First day up there, we decided to go for a quick paddle down on the loch. From high up in our room we could see the water was rough. The wind was blowing hard, but it was just a quick jaunt we wanted, a bit of fresh air. Once down on the loch, the rough water was even rougher! Once in our boats, we paddled hard for about 20 mins and had managed to travel the grand distance of approximately 100yards. We couldn't even get much distance to play on the waves, so we about turned, headed back in and had a trip into Aberfeldy instead.

Same water, different day!

Our twisty river

Later in the week, we had a wee trip up to Loch Eigheach, next to Rannoch station. We followed a small river up the side of the loch, twisting and turning round increasingly tight corners, til we ended up in a forest opening for lunch. We decided to call a halt here as we were practically doing a three point turn trying to manoeuvre round the bends.
Each morning we would waken up to see Schiehallion , more often than not sitting with a large cloud on the top and also getting seriously buffeted with the wind. On our last day, the mountain was clear and the wind had died down, so a walk to the top was the days exercise. Just after we started, we spotted a couple of large birds, which after we'd enlarged the photos, discovered they were Red Kites. The tags on their wings showed they had been tagged near Stirling and were now 10 years old.
 The week before, Schiehallion was covered in thick snow, but was now almost completely cleared apart from a very small patch of snow large enough to make snow angels on. By the time we got to the top, the cloud had come down again. The view we got was non existent. On our way back down we watched a young Golden eagle being chased by a couple of Buzzards.
I'm already looking forward to next year.
On the Saturday, we eventually got a little bit of long awaited surf up at St Andrews to try out the surf kayaks. We've now at last decided which boats we want. Now to pray for a few more wavy days to play with them.