British Isles: Ullapool and What Day is This?
Our day started slowly, thank goodness. We are still sailing from Belfast to Ullapool, and we don’t expect to land until 1:00. Later we figure it out – at this time of year, there can be huge morning fogs. Most of the time it starts burning off around late morning. You can’t see much through the thick fog.
Some people are sleeping in, some are doing laundry. We have breakfast with our friends, then we hit the spa. We are ready to kick back. We are having a lot of fun, enjoying all the activity, and the truth is also – we are aging. We need to rest. I need time to process and integrate all the new sights I am seeing and cultural differences I am experiencing.
We are excited about our tour today, The Scenic Assynt. We tendered in, and boarded our bus. It got off to a surprising start. We were all aboard and the bus started. Two minutes into the trip, the air conditioning went off and the bus became stuffy very quickly. Formerly civil Viking tourists became rude, and shouted that we needed AC, but I think the driver needed the extra power to attack the hill heading out of the port. The bus rumbled and shuddered, and the guide was doing her best to soothe the savage beasts but was also on her phone to headquarters trying to get a back up bus and there wasn’t any.
It got better. The AC came back on, and we stopped at a geological reserve.
Here is where I have to make a sad confession. This reserve was wonderful. It had special stations to demonstrate how very old rock had extruded and somehow become above the much younger rock.
When I uploaded my photos, of this trip into the Assynt, and the next trip, in the Orkneys, I somehow didn’t save them to the desktop, and carefully deleted them from my camera and card.
Fortunately AdventureMan took some photos, and I had some on my phone, but sadly, the trips were both wonderful and I can’t show you how greatly wonderful they were. I am so sorry.
We also stopped by the ruins of an old castle en route to the small fishing village of Lochinver, very beautiful, very small, and I took a walk in the opposite direction of the others, and it was so QUIET.
One thing you don’t get on a cruise ship is a lot of quiet. Viking ships are quieter than most, but you get 900 people together, there’s going to be some noise. For the first time ever, we have a loudly quarreling, quarrelsome couple on one side of us. Fortunately, it is sporadic, not all the time.
With the fog rolling in to this small fishing village of Lochinver, it was so silent. It wasn’t even muffled, it was silent. My ears were ringing with the silence! I loved it!
I rely on my photos to tell the story, and without them, I can’t remember all that I saw. What I do remember is the warmth with which we were greeted at Ullapool, in the Scottish Highlands, that they truly made us feel appreciated. I remember thinking I would love to come back to Ullapool, so small, so isolated, with so few tourists. There were families, and hikers and people from many nations, but not the thousands that come in on the ships. We were the only ship in port this day.
Much of the time is foggy in Ullapool, in August, and then there are times when the fog burns off. Then the fog comes back again, and then, just as the sun is setting, it might break through.
We have reservations this night at Manfredi’s, the ship’s Italian specialty restaurant, and are shown to a quiet table by the window in the back of the restaurant. We love it. Our waiters are kind and funny, and help us make great choices for dinner.
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