Majestic mountains and super scones

Well, here I am, sat on a bench, overlooking the bay at Gairloch. The sun is trying its hardest, but the wind is just a bit too fresh for me to remove my coat. Chris is out on test, with one of the Inverness examiners, who do the rounds of the more remote test centres.

The drive over - particularly from Achnasheen onwards - is just breathtaking. The view above is soon after Achnasheen, heading down toward Loch Maree. This is spectacular enough, but, further on, the road runs along the SW side of the Loch and you get tremendous views of the fearsome fortress of Slioch (see below).

In my last post I commented on instructors bringing their pupils here for a supposedly easy test. I take some of it back. The road through the village is narrow and dips and dives as it goes around some sharp bends. Ok, there are no roundabouts or traffic lights, but, in the hour before his test, Chris had to deal with some very casual pedestrians, oncoming vehicles approaching a bit too fast on our side of the road, and a lady herding her sheep through the village. Gairloch to Poolewe should have been perfect preparation for how to deal with faster roads; you have to look as far ahead as possible to judge speed and gears, in order to keep on the correct side of the road.

Whilst waiting for Chris, I popped into a hillwalking supply/bookshop/coffeeshop. I bought a cappuccino, a ginger & date scone and a marmalade scone to take away and was a little surprised to be charged £7.37; a somewhat random and slightly excessive amount, I thought. However, once I started tucking into the huge marmalade scone I decided it was a bit of a bargain, with virtually a whole orange chopped up on top of the scone. In fact, the scone was so big, I was still trying to finish it and lick a litre of marmalade off my lips by the time Chris returned. I can’t wait to see how many kilos of dates are in my second scone.

Having set myself up for a fall in my last post, it was perhaps inevitable that Chris didn’t pass. Strangely, it was coming back from Poolewe, a road that he handled so well in the hour before the test, that he approached a bend too fast for the examiner’s liking. The examiner, quite rightly, considered that this was potentially unsafe, and registered this as a serious fault.

One of the least enjoyable parts of my job is driving the pupil home after they have failed a test. In this case, this meant over an hour’s drive. Fortunately, Chris is a cheerful soul and, with the sun shining on the majestic scenery, it wasn’t so bad. And I had several hundred opportunities to demonstrate how a bend should be approached.