21st April

On the first day of photography I drove from my overnight resting place (Grantown-on-Spey) to Ullapool and then northward toward Lochinver. Just to the north of Inchnadamph (this place remains in my mind infamously as the site of a rowdy geological field trip I was on some 38 years ago) I came upon Ardvreck Castle. The following is a description taken from the Discover Scotland website and reproduced here almost (but not quite) verbatim.

"Ardvreck Castle comprises a finger of stone, pointing accusingly at the sky. Just enough remains to identify it as once having been a three storey tower house of traditional design, including a corbelled section that once housed the main staircase and part of a vaulted basement level. Across the narrow neck of the promontory is a dry stone wall that marks the line of an old defensive wall: traces of the original defensive ditch here can still be seen.

The castle dates back to about 1490 when the lands were owned by the Macleods of Assynt. Its only place in history is an especially inglorious one. On 25 April 1650, the Marquis of Montrose fighting for the Royalist cause even after the execution of Charles I lost the battle of Carbisdale to a much smaller Covenanter army. His flight brought him, two days later, to Ardvreck Castle, where he sought sanctuary with Neil Macleod of Assynt.

Neil was away, and his wife, Christine, tricked Montrose into the castle dungeon and sent for troops of the Covenanter Government. Montrose was taken to Edinburgh where he was executed on 21 May 1650. This stands as a remarkable betrayal of Highland hospitality.

Ardvreck Castle was attacked and captured by the Mackenzies in 1672. In 1726 they replaced it with the more modern Calda House (apparently recycling some of the stone from Ardvreck when they did so).

This burned down in 1737 and before the Mackenzies were able to rebuild the house, their estates had been seized by the Crown for their support of the losing side in the 1745 uprising. It has remained a ruin ever since".

The weather had turned from rainy that day to much more spectacular as the day drew to its end. I shot several rolls of black and white film (oh thank heaven!) and also some digital shots A few of these are reproduced here and, I hope, give you an idea of just how nice things were and how relieved I was feeling to get some light at last.