Is that it?

Well that didn’t last long, did it? I’m talking about our ‘summer,’ up here in the Highlands. Admittedly, being this far north, the area is not really considered to be a Mecca for sun seekers, but the temperatures are not considerably different from the temperatures I was used to in southern England and, in fact, when it is sunny, the lack of pollution to block the sun’s rays means that it can actually get quite hot.

Not this year though. May and June were quite promising, but July and, so far, August, have been disappointing. Sometimes I feel sorry for the tourists because we enjoyed some fantastic weather - clear blue skies and a burning sun - in Forres and the Moray coast, and especially in Ullapool and the West Highlands early in the Summer, then, just as the tourist season got going, the weather went. I watch the tourists trudging around, heads down in a portion of chips, stepping out in the road in front of my learners, while the weather confirms all their preconceptions of Scottish weather. I used to feel particularly sorry for the tourists who came to take photos of Loch Ness: When I used to live in Glen Urquhart, and drove along loch Ness every day, I would never cease to be impressed with how beautiful it could look. Then I would see bus-loads of tourists, some of whom had travelled halfway around the world, pose in front of the loch, smiling for the camera, while the beauty of the scenery was obscured by the low cloud and drizzle. I often wondered how they described the Highlands to their friends when they returned home.

Sometimes the tourists can be a source of entertainment. A couple of months ago I noticed a couple of tourists (I’ll let you guess their nationally) at Bunchrew, spending ages taking countless photographs of the Beauly Firth (an inlet of the Moray Firth, between Inverness and Beauly). “This is beautiful.” they proclaimed, “Is their much shipping on Lake Ness?”
Momentarily distracted by the ‘lake’, I replied “This isn’t actually Loch Ness.”
“Oh. So what have we been taking photos of then?”
I explained that they would have some very nice pictures of the Beauly Firth and gave them directions to Loch Ness, ten miles south-west of Bunchrew.
A few weeks later another tourist was asking me about the times of high and low tides on the Beauly Firth. Then they asked me if it was ‘salt or fresh water?’
I guess they weren’t as clueless as the person (of the same nationality as the aforementioned tourists) who Jane and I met a few years ago. On hearing our accents he asked where we were from. When we told him he said “Oh, how wonderful. I’ve always wanted to go to England. I’ve never seen the Eiffel Tower.”
We didn’t have the heart to break the news to him.

Anyway, back to our Scottish Summer. It was a fantastic season for the ski resorts, especially the Cairngorms. The ski slopes were officially open until June 21st, the longest day of the year, and some of the more hardcore were still snowboarding and skiing after then. I’m not sure about the Cairngorms (where the snow probably stayed even longer), but Ben Wyvis, An Teallach and many of the West Highland mountains still had some snow until mid-July, despite the good weather in June. The depressing thing is that it is probably only a couple of months before the snow returns. Actually, it is not really depressing. If the snow does return as early as October (which it often does), it is likely only to be confined to the tops of the higher mountains, and HOPEFULLY should not bother us at lesser altitudes until December. Just non-religiously praying (is that possible?) that next winter is nowhere near as bad as last winter.

The thing about summer I will miss the most is the long daylight hours. Although not as extreme as it was when I was in John O’Groats, for a few weeks in late June/early July, it never really gets completely dark. I guess that about 1.30 - 2.00 am is the darkest time, but it is difficult to be sure. There have been many nights when, while working in hotels, I would drive home in the early hours, trying to work out if it was getting darker or lighter. The picture was taken at Bunchrew in late June, at 11.20pm. Just this week, however, I have had a couple of lessons where headlights have been necessary. Unfortunately we can’t have it both ways because, in the winter it is a different story, where we might only get about 7 hours of daylight.

The football season has started (Liverpool are still unbeaten!), everyone went back to school this week, ’X Factor’ and ’Strictly…’ will soon be dominating the television schedules, petrol station forecourts have replaced their displays of barbecue charcoal with bags of coal and kindling, the Rowan trees are displaying worrying amounts of berries (see last year’s posts for the suggested implication) and, no doubt, it won’t be too long before the supermarkets are devoting aisles to Christmas crap.

Summer in the Highlands may not be the longest, or the hottest, but while I sit watching the sea canoeists at Ardmair Bay, TMS on the radio, blue skies above, a strong sun and temperatures in the low 20s, there is nowhere on earth I would rather be.