Scotland again!

Bella: A group of us are going to Sheigra at the end of May - do you want to come along?

Fiend: *checks weather* Yeah!.

Not quite as simple as that, but almost. There was a lot more weather-checking for a start, but in the end the forecast looked promising and indeed turned out to be even better - I think we had an hour or two of very light rain in the whole week?? Amazing. And what a pleasure to be invited along on someone's trip, I really appreciate that. Exactly what I wanted this year.

It was, again, really rather good...

Our cottage:

I don't think I need to say much more about the scenery again, it is equally beautiful and the 2 hour drive from Inverness to Sheigra is full of all types of spectacle. I was also rather fond of the fishing village / mini-port of Kinlochbervie - compared to Torridon it was very civilised, with a petrol station, hotel/pub, and well-stocked Spar with plentiful black and white poodin'. All quite reassuring as well as being in a truly delightful situation. Staying in a cottage was, of course, the lap of luxury, but split between a team of 8 also pretty reasonable. It was interesting being with a group of almost total strangers for a week, and pretty challenging socially when I had a stinking cold for the first half of the week. I'm still not entirely convinced how much I like human beings, but I got on with most people well enough. And managed to climb every day despite ailments :) - the elbow incidentally was pretty good despite the often steep climbing, apart from one heinous sandbag route that was my only failure of the trip.

Climbing in the superb Sheigra Second Geo:

The climbing this trip was great in it's variety and quality (although some of the minor crags were fairly minor, the better places more than made up for them). Of particular note was Sheigra's famous Second Geo - a singular zawn/wall that truly is nirvana for E1/2 wall climbing. A quality day there was really the whole point of the 9 1/2 drive north and indeed very good. Also, two of the longer, more epic days out were rewarding: Creag Shomarlie with it's hour drive, hour and a half walk-in and highly traditional multi-pitch mountain routes. Not my specialist subject but actually very enjoyable. And my first proper sea-stack, Am Buchaille. Again not exactly the soft-touch option for access: 1 1/2 hour walk to Sandwood Bay, 1/2 hour slog/scramble/boulder beach around the headland, 10m obligatory swim plus bag hauling, all with a reputed threat of a narrow tidal window. By far the most effort I've put into climbing 50m of easy VS choss :). In the end everything went shockingly smoothly and obviously it was a fine adventure.

Chuffed at the general scenery/climbing/weather combination:

More thoughts on all this soon.