Autumn colours

Well, as you can see, I finally got the photo problem licked! I think it was because my PC didn't have enough RAM left. I deleted loads of old files and folders, and lo and behold, it worked!

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So, the autumn photos?

Next morning I decided to drive back down Loch Ness-side, turn right at the Drum onto the road to Cannich and Glen Affric, then up along by the river Affric to Beauly and back to Inverness before making my way home to Peebles, to be back before I was due to go into work!

Given time I'd have turned left at Cannich and driven to the end of the road where there's a path that continues alongside Loch Affric then through the hills. I walked it once, a good number of years ago now, staying overnight at the oh so remote and basic - if not primitive - youth hostel in the heart of the mountains, before continuing westwards, emerging from the hills at Kintail on the west coast! It was a beautiful walk, although it rained a lot, and I got blisters through wearing new boots that hadn't been worn in enough!

However on Wednesday, because I kept stopping to leap out of the car to take a photograph, time was something I really couldn't afford, having left Inverness too late in the morning. I turned right and followed the road over the river Affric and alongside it, past a roaring torrent of a waterfall, and scenery magnificent with autumn colour, as you can see.

wild rose hips

(below)






The road from Cannich is a quiet country one, wide enough for one car width comfortably, so to allow overtaking, or if you meet another car coming the other way, these passing spaces give you a place to manoeuvre!

From Beauly the route lies alongside the Moray Firth to reach Inverness, and in the distance, the Kessock Bridge that takes the A9 on its continued journey north over the Black Isle and up to the top of Scotland! When I used to visit Moira I would cross the bridge, but not this time. At Inverness it was time to turn south again, soon passing the Cairngorm mountains with their light snow caps, beyond Aviemore, and the other small villages off the main route.

If anything the colours in Perthshire were that little bit better than further north - possibly the type of trees growing! Perthshire has a lot of beech as well as the birch found in Inverness-shire. However driving the A9 there is little opportunity to take photos. Once or twice I just switched the camera on and pointed it in a general direction through the windscreen before clicking, and hoping for the best! Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't! The snowy Cairngorms one wasn't bad!

So I arrived back finally in Peebles, with twenty minutes to spare before I was due at work for the evening! Not bad going!

Talk again soon.