We wake late and have a wonderful home-cooked breaky after which we drive to the Glencoe Visitor’s Center in a woodland under some nice hills whose names we forget but probably have “glaich” or “clathearn” or “morloch” in them. The trail we climb without any map assistance is a lovely gravelly road for trucks to get to the top of the high hill to repair a telecommunications repeater of sorts (secretly a teleportation site: see photo).

People with dogs climb the same path but few and far between. We have the world to ourselves. From the top, as you can see in the photo, you see the bridge of Ballachulish, two lochs and a panorama of pastoral gray clouds but unsullied by rain (ahem, for about the first time … but we’re not really complaining). Cynthia sits on a bench with a view of a valley with another completely unspeakable or pronounceable Scottish name while David climbs to the teleportation tower.

It’s a nice break … and a nice break from the break-neck speed we’ve been traveling lately. We return to our lodge, drink a shot of the seaweed-infused gin our hostess, Dawn, made herself for a local gin-making contest. And won! Her recipe is now being used for commercial gin made in Glencoe. She gets NO royalties. Damn, the gin was really good but not yet in production. Tant pis pour nous.

We drive a half hour along a lake to the Pier House Hotel Restaurant in Appin Bay where we cannot sit in the really nice room with the bay window overlooking the lake because we are not staying at the hotel and, since half the tables in that room remain empty during our meal in the OTHER room, we assume a lotta other people are not staying there either.

But the seafood is delicious. The place is famous for its steamed mussels and lives up to it. We drive back to the lodge and sleep content, ready to go to Eileen Donan Castle and the Isle of Skye tomorrow.