It has been quite a week, with storm Dudley followed hard on the heels by storm Eunice. We were very thankful that the storms hadn’t hit us as hard this time in the Highlands with them coming in across England this time - although further windy weather was forecast after the weekend. In our case the storms brought snow instead of the dangerous winds. The woods by the house once again turning white!
With perfect timing for the weekend, the Saturday morning forecast was clear skies in our part of highlands along with low winds. The temperature was freezing over Friday night but due to rise quite a bit late Saturday morning and afternoon, so we headed off earlier than usual in the car for a road trip hoping to get photos of snowy scenes before too much thaw set in!
As we left the Beauly area it was quite a contrast to home, with very little snow, but heading north we soon encountered the whitening landscape as we entered regions of lower temperatures.
The grandeur of the mountains really struck me on this trip. The beautiful clear skies providing such a superb backdrop for these imposing snow laden slopes.
The original plan was to head up to Kinlochewe again, but as we passed through Achnasheen I thought we’d take the Loch Carron route instead; a route we’ve not been on that many times. The scenery was stunning as always.
I was struck once again with the scale of the mountains and their imposing nature. Taking the photos with a telephoto lens really helped to convey some of their presence.
The road took us up by Shieldaig and was a stunning route with continuous mountain views.
Soon we were back on familiar roads passing Loch Torridon on the way back home:
The view below is of the ridges of the Beinn Eighe range.
The wind had been low through the day, but not sufficient for the lochs to be still. However as we passed the Beinn Eighe range of ridges I noticed that a small loch some distance away on the other side of the road looked very calm. So we parked up and I walked the few hundred yards through heather, bog and grassy ground to check it out - it was well worth the effort.
It was time to focus on heading back - passing the familiar view back down to Loch Maree.
This was one of the views we passed, with this particular mountain heavily laden with snow!
The final stop was at Loch a’ Chuilinn - the same place I had stopped during a road trip over the Christmas period when I caught the embers of the sunset on that occasion. By now the weather had completely changed from the morning with the predicted cloud cover just obscuring the sun as I took this photo.
All in all a stunning day out …