Wednesday 12 July 2023

Swimming at Port Alt na Bradhan

The next week at Ullapool was very pleasant; the weather continued to be mixed but mainly good. Definitely still summery even though no longer a heatwave. A highlight was swimming at Port Alt na Bradhan. It was a sunny day and the water was the most gorgeous turquoise colour, really stunning. The artist from whom we bought our painting of the beach had promised us that at high tide the shallow water becomes quite warm as it heats up over the sand. Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far! It still felt quite cold when I went in, but when I swam out to some rocks in the deeper water and then back to shore I could definitely feel that it was warmer in the shallows. I stayed in for ages and then warmed up with coffee that James brewed up using his rocket stove. My legs were all scratched by climbing on the rocks, in quite an unladylike fashion. 
I had a coffee with Natasha on Sunday 9th, after only seeing each other in passing since our last coffee about two years ago! We had a good chat about all sorts of things; she has such an interesting life with her jobs in Ullapool and the family croft. 
On 10th July we travelled back to Glasgow. We had a terrible job catching Tom to put him into the car; made suspicious by seeing us packing up the car he stayed out of doors all morning. I caught him by rattling a tub of dreamies and picking him up while he was eating them. I popped him into the cottage and closed the door, while James and I finished our coffee, sitting outside on the bench. But it turns out that the door sometimes doesn’t latch properly (I hadn’t realised this) and Tom soon came strolling back out of the porch and down the path towards the lane. He walked with studied casualness, no doubt hoping we wouldn’t notice. I started following him and he kept ahead of me down the lane and then turned sharp left into some dense foliage. There was nothing I could do. We had to wait for more than an hour before he came back to the house! Meanwhile Floof was hiding behind the television so we popped them both into the car and set off homewards. 

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