Another week draws to a close. It had been a week of some stunning skies with the contrast of fiery sunsets and unusually threatening cloud formations on one evening and super Spring colours:
As the weekend approached I noticed we were due for a really calm start to Saturday, although the quality of the sunrise wasn’t very certain in terms of cloud cover.
Knowing it was going to be so calm with the wind speed due to be down to 2mph or even lower around 6.00am, I decided to sacrifice the Saturday lie in and was out on the road by 5.30am. The hope was for reflections at Loch Laidh and then plans to visit the Woodland Trust woods at Drumnadrochit for the bluebells.
Unfortunately it was too cloudy for good sunrise colours but the loch was like a mill-pond when I arrived.
After waiting a while to see whether the sun would manage to break through the clouds, which it didn’t, I moved on to Loch Ness. In all the years of Highland holidays, I don’t recall ever seeing Loch Ness totally calm, and I’m sure I have no photos of such a rare occurrence. But today was one of those occasions, with reflections as far as the eye could see - a special moment, since the size of expanse of water means it has to be extremely calm to get such conditions.
I stopped off at a number of places on the way to Drumnadrochit - and even managed to get glimpses of the sun lighting up Urquhart Castle.
I headed off to see whether the bluebells were on show. The woods are about a mile from the Drumnadrochit car park. Arriving so early, I decided to see whether there was a free parking space by the woods. I had read on the Internet that there were a couple of spaces - along a rough track! It was worth checking and parked up by the entrance of the Woodland Trust area.
There are a number of marked footpaths in the woods, of which I took the steepest to get up to the viewpoint I was wanting to reach. There’s a spot that gives you a great view down over Drumnadrochit with Loch Ness in the background.
A variety of woodland flowers were on display. It seemed a few weeks too early to get the bluebells in their full glory, although carpets of them could be seen.
On the way back I noticed that the Loch Ness reflections had gone, which emphasised the great timing to be out early enough to capture the moment of stillness over the loch. Back home just after 8.00am. A great start to the day,