Our West Coast Adventure continued on Sunday, starting out from Glenelg. Having only been to Glenelg twice, with both times being in the last couple of months, I’ve only just discovered what a beautiful place it is. Near enough all sections of the West Coast are impressive, but that area has a different kind of beauty about it. There are trees, for a start, which I’m not used to! The sea was flat calm with perfect reflections – always a good sign when you’ve got some lighthouses coming up.

Our first lighthouse viewing of the day was the old Sandaig tower, which is near the ferry crossing to Kylerhea. Having seen the modern tower that replaced it the day before, it gives a better idea of how it must have looked in its former location. What a wonderful scene that would have been. Then again, it was wonderful to see the modern light there too, and on our last visit to Glenelg, to get inside the old tower, which we wouldn’t have been able to do if the light had not been replaced.

Of course, the Kylerhea light was only a little further north on the opposite side of the Kyle. As mentioned above, conditions were perfect for reflections and Kylerhea was a great place to witness this. As one of the other group members said “We get two lighthouses for the price of one”. Surrounded by trees and green brown foliage the bright white lighthouse stands out perfectly. It’s not a big tower, but it’s definitely well-located both for navigation purposes and aesthetic value.

On the approach to Kyle of Lochalsh we sailed close to Eilean Dubha East with its flat-pack lighthouse. I’d seen this one before, but only from Kyle of Lochalsh or Kyleakin. From a distance these structures are really just a white rectangle, so it is always well worth seeing them closer in my opinion – not only to appreciate the lighthouse, but also the islands that they sit on.  This one had a couple of wind-swept trees next to the lighthouse, which actually made it a more interesting view (I realise that sounds strange, but it’s true). On the neighbouring island was another, more unique structure bearing a light, apparently called Eight Metre Rock lighthouse. It’s a little too small to interest me much, but it looked a bit like a little robot with two solar panel eyes.

Of course Kyleakin was next up, after a brief stop to pick up some lunch at Kyle of Lochalsh. I’m not sure why, but I always struggle to get a good picture of this one. It’s quite nice to get pictures of it with the bridge, but it never seems to impress as much as others do. Perhaps it is the presence of the bridge, dwarfing it, that takes away the lovely views. I’m not sure. It’s still a great place though and I recall fondly when we stayed in the cottage there a few years ago and had a tour of the lighthouse. There’s a lot of history associated with the lighthouse and the island, Eilean Ban. Gavin Maxwell appears to be the one to thank for the appeal of it and it was nice to see another area he became known for when we were on one of the Sandaig Islands the day before. I can see why he was so attached to this area.

Up until this point, our lighthouse adventure for the day had been limited to just sailing past them. However, that changed in the afternoon. Our next lighthouse was the Crowlin Islands flat-pack. The Crowlin Islands are made up of three islands and the lighthouse is located on the smallest of the three. As we were there with a few island-baggers, in the interests of time we separated into a few different groups. My group was, of course, the lighthouse-baggers. Well, it wasn’t so much a group as it was just John and I. While landing on the island was fine, the walk across to the lighthouse was tougher than the others we’d done. In most places you couldn’t see where you were putting your feet and every step you just hoped for the best and that you wouldn’t fall into a massive hole. Thankfully there hasn’t been any significant amount of rain recently so the island was very dry, which helped. On the other hand, it was a warm day which contributed a little to the effort of getting there. We reached the lighthouse eventually though and enjoyed the blue sky views. On the previous day, at Ornsay if I recall correctly, it had been rather jokingly suggested that we should try to work out how many people it takes to hug a lighthouse. Well, I suggested that we should attempt to find out how many people it takes to hug a flat-pack lighthouse and Crowlin lighthouse seemed like the perfect one to try it out on. It turns out that a standard sized flat-pack takes 3 Sarah’s and 2.25 John’s to fully embrace it – so 6 people is the answer. Just a fun little exercise.

We returned back to the landing point just as the boat was heading across from the last island. I think John was quite proud that he’d successfully managed to guide us to and from the lighthouse – even if it did mean having to stop every now and then to allow me to catch up. Well done John!

We had one final lighthouse stop for the day (there were non-lighthouse islands in between) and that was Rona – or South Rona as we call it in order to differentiate from North Rona, which also has a lighthouse. The skipper, Derek from North Coast Seatours, had phoned ahead to check with the military (who operate on the island) that it was ok for us to land there and walk up to the lighthouse. Due to technology problems he’d not been able to get a clear response, but we were all pleased to hear that the guys there were expecting us. We walked through a number of military buildings before the road became quite steep. It was quite a walk up to the lighthouse, but it’s always rewarding when you get there and are blessed with wonderful views of a great lighthouse and the surrounding scenery. By this point I knew that the rest of the group were hooked on lighthouses. There was really no denying it. One very obvious piece of evidence to support this was that I decided we should continue the “how many people does it take to hug a lighthouse” game, and all 9 people there got involved, which was lucky as it turned out that it takes exactly 9 people of varying sizes to hug Rona lighthouse! The views were brilliant and the lone tower next to the old cottages surprised me as it so often does when you see these towers from afar and they look like they are attached to other buildings. We all hung around for a while at the lighthouse and then on the helipad before, rather unwillingly, heading back to the boat.

Getting back to the boat was important though as we had to reach our final destination for the night, which was Gairloch. On this occasion we weren’t able to visit the new Gairloch Heritage Museum, partly because it’s not yet open, but also because of our late arrival and early start. I look forward to going sometime after June though as it looks like the old Rubha Reidh lens is to be more of a centre-piece in the Museum. It was really nicely located before in the circular conservatory-type building, so it will be interesting to see what they have done with it.

That was the end of yet another amazing day. By that point I was already feeling a little sad that there was only one day left of the trip, but what a day it was to be – more on that soon! 🙂