13th April

Sometimes I just want to give up. Today started out with good weather in Lochinver, then it rained for most of the 1.5 hour drive to the start of the Sandwood Bay trail, then the weather cleared and the majority of the day was spectacularly good. The scenery was special all the way north from Lochinver and was almost spiritual at Sandwood Bay ('spiritual' when said by me is just about the most incredible complement I can utter). So what the heck am I complaining about? Well, here goes nuthin.

My digital camera started playing up early this morning so I fixed it by doing a RESET of the camera functions. That did the trick but, of course, a reset RESETS everything. In this case it reset the picture quality (amongst many other factory presets). I spent the rest of the day recording high quality JPEG images instead of RAW files. Now for you none photographers out there you probably neither know the difference between RAW and JPEG nor do you care. Suffice to say that for someone who works extensively in Photoshop like I do RAW is important and JPEG is like working with a toy image. Okay okay I can still use the JPEG but it is a vastly inferior file format. So I lost a day's worth of images to RAW but I still have usable JPEGS so it's not really a big deal. The next problem is A BIG DEAL. While photographing waves at Sandwood Bay I was..er how can I say this - caught by surprise by one of those freak once an hour type waves that dwarfs all others. Kinda like the tsunami that hit Japan only bigger. In shock I shuffled up the beach in true old man style before realizing that I had left my camera/tripod in the waves. Of course the camera was tipped over and spent a good 10 seconds in good old sandy, gritty seawater. As soon as I post this I will be turning to the task of trying to clean up the camera in fresh water (easy) and removing all the sand (good luck with that one). The camera presently is non-functional and if I cannot resolve THAT problem then it's Sayonara to using film for the rest of this trip. So a good day turned bad because of my own ineptitude and, as I said at the start, sometimes I just want to give up. Here are a few pictures taken today:

Old House near Kinlochbervie

First view of Sandwood Bay

The south end of Sandwood Bay

The middle of Sandwood Bay (watch out for the waves!)

Am Buchaille seastack (and the only two people on the beach)

North end of Sandwood Bay

The sand dunes

Dune grasses

Lochinver Bay at dusk from the hotel