So we’re back in Melvaig again, looking forward to two weeks this time of our holiday reminding ourselves how horribly unfit we are. As ever here, I’m writing this a day behind as the internet is not quite the broadband we’re used to in Birmingham, although we’re lucky to have it out here at all really!
So we drove up on Saturday, did our usual mega shop in Inverness and then got to Melvaig around half 8, about a 12 hour journey door to door, approximately 2 hours of which was not spent driving in the pouring rain/ridiculous fog. After spending the week before attacking the house electrics we were both pretty knackered so that was about it for the Saturday.
Sunday it’s pretty miserable, I don’t mind the rain but the cloud is struggling to work out the difference in location between the ground and the sky and simply settling for both. Good thing about rain though is it leads to impressive waterfalls. As we’re both still recovering slightly, and we got up at a stupid time (didn’t realise the clocks changed) we decided to ease ourselves in with a little walk around this place.
Corrieshalloch Gorge – north somewhere.
If I remember rightly, the walking book said that it’s a 61m deep gorge formed by the rivers of melting glaciers several millions of year ago. A board by the car park also explains that the translation for “Corrieshalloch” is “ugly hollow”… who knew.
Crossing the gorge is this suspension bridge, built somewhen in the 1800’s by someone significant, and by the looks of it, fairly recently restored. Slightly weird experience walking across as not only is it very high but while it looks very substantial it moves quite a lot with people on it, of which the sign tells you there shouldn’t be more than 6.
The photos I took of the gorge from the bridge really didn’t do it justice, so I’ll stick with the later one from the viewpoint. After crossing the bridge we walked up besides the gorge crossing little streams, despite the sign that advised us not to, this path isn’t “managed”.
You can’t go far anyway as the gorge is between two intersecting roads but it’s interesting to see these massive rock buttresses that jut out into the chasm below.
Returning to the path, you continue further down to a big built out viewing platform which gives much better photos. Still, it’s hard to get a sense of scale though, probably the best indication is that at the top of the waterfall you can just see the suspension bridge.
After the viewpoint, you have to wobble back over the bridge and you can then follow a track around to complete a small loop in the surrounding scrub land. I took some pitcures of moss. I like moss ok.
And finally a view of the rest of the valley the gorge cuts in two.
For the most part we avoided the rain too. As I’m now writing this the evening of the day later I can now categorically say that this was not the case for the next day, more to follow tomorrow as we walk the Inverianvie and Gruinard rivers regardless of weather.
The Kombi Chronicles 