Even more snow

It’s still snowing in Ullapool and I still have the lurgy. At least I’m warm and cosy, and I think I’m getting a bit better apart from my wheezy, rattling chest and sore ear. The road from Ullapool to Inverness varies between “passable with care” and blocked by snow, but we won’t be heading home until Sunday when it should all be clear. 
James is being particularly pleasant to me as I recover; last night he found a French film on some obscure television channel for me to watch and today he brought in potato scones for lunch. The French film was Maigret Se Trompe and was excellent, one of a series of 1990s Maigret films made for television starring Bruno Cremer. 
The trouble is that I’m currently a bit wary of going outside. You would think that a healthy walk around the village would be beneficial to a chest infection but every time I have done so (about every second day) I feel more wheezy and out of breath when I get back, and my ear gets sorer too. Maybe it’s the cold air - the temperature in the north of Scotland is due to drop to -16 deg tonight!  

Snowy and Lurgy

The weather has continued to be cold, with snow showers and icy pavements. Despite having at least a dozen woolly hats at home in Cambuslang I had neglected to bring even one of them to Ullapool, so today James kindly spent £4 on a sparkly purple beanie hat in the Woollen Mill sale. Despite the name of the shop there is no wool in the beanie; it is 99% polyester and 1% metallic thread so no sheep has been near it! It feels very cosy, and also necessary because I have developed a bad cold which is lingering annoyingly, particularly in my chest which is rattling, my stuffy nose, and strangely my right ear. James also got me a hot water bottle yesterday which I have been holding against my ear. 

So because of this horrible cold I have been having an enforcedly quiet time here in Ullapool. I have encouraged James to enjoy himself, go for walks etc but I feel bad for not joining in. This morning we were surprised to see Calmac’s new ship, the Glen Sannox, sailing along the loch outside our window, heading westwards. This ship is currently nearly seven years late after many problems, both technical and financial, during its build. It is also way over budget (from £97 million to more than £400 million so far) and doesn’t even fit Ardrossan Harbour so it will need to sail from Troon to Brodick instead until Ardrossan Harbour is upgraded - which will be years away. And apparently the liquified natural gas that it runs on (as well as marine gas oil, a low-sulphur type of diesel) is not even as eco friendly as promised. It was up here to conduct crew familiarisation trials before starting to take passengers to Arran, and needless to say more technical issues were found so another delay seems likely. Oh dear oh dear. 

Pulling Mussels from a Shell

The snow continued during the night and we woke to a winter wonderland, with the village and mountains clothed in a snowy blanket. We walked around the village in the afternoon and enjoyed the snowy views. We watched the seagulls at the harbour to see where they were finding mussels to drop onto the pier to crack open, and realised that they grab them off the wooden legs underneath the pier at low tide. Then they fly around a bit with the mussel in their beak before choosing a good place for the big drop, and swoop down to feast on it. As we walked back to the cottage the sky over the Summer Isles was an amazing dark grey-blue and violet; James said that it looked bruised and I think that’s a very good description. 
In the evening we watched a film called “The Killer” starring Michael Fassbender; it was a sombre but quite compelling thriller and we enjoyed it. The reason that I wanted to watch it was that it was being filmed in Paris when we were there in May 2023 on a street on the Île Saint Louis. I could see that some of it was filmed in a street near the Panthéon but I didn’t really recognise the streets that the main character then raced through on a motorcycle. And I didn’t see any sign of James and I strolling along in the distance! 

The Northern Lights welcome 2025

It has been a delightful start to 2025. I still have a very rattly chest cold but I decided to accompany James on a walk around the village to get some fresh air. The village was very quiet and the few people who were strolling around were all wishing each other a Happy New Year. The weather was sunny, in a window between the rain and sleet that began and ended the day, and the sea was very calm and the mountains looked beautiful, dusted with snow. When we were walking on the pier a Norwegian fisherman on his ship called down a New Year’s greeting to us. We walked along to the creel Christmas tree and then found that the Ceilidh Place was open for lunch (about the only place in the village that was open) so we popped in for coffee and fruit scones before heading home. 

Later on there was a bright pink aurora borealis in the skies above the village which seemed like a rosy welcome to the New Year. And later still the sleet turned to snow for a little while and lay rather prettily on the garden. A good start to the year.