Holiday Ardnamurchan - 15 October - Journey to the land of the "SQUEAKING" sands

 

Time travels differently on the peninsula, everything happens organically and very much at its own pace.  This is what we found when heading off this morning.  The plan was to head off to the singing sands near Kentra, these were quickly renamed the Squeaking sands by Anita.

We'd hardly left the house when we were caught up in a highland traffic jam, courtesy of a rather large and oblivious Highland Bull, who proceeded to wander up the road in front of us.

 

When he eventually found a suitable place to move over onto the verge (this was decided by the quality of vegetation to munch and nothing to do with the designated passing places) he kindly posed for us for a couple of photographs.

 

 
Having passed the bull and with Susan driving we soon started to make good progress, maybe too much progress in fact as we ended up overshooting where we should have been and ended up at an amazing little village and bay wish some stunning rock formations, that Leo and the other (big) children immediately had to climb on, over and run round.

Contemplating that big step

Sometimes you have to contemplate these things

 

The water up here is so clear.

Another big kid (Sarah)

 I still can't believe how clear the water is up round here, you can watch the fish and crabs meters below the surface and on a warmer day it would have been everybody in the water.

Having retraced our steps we found the parking place for the path to the squeaking sands and immediately stopped for lunch, some things just can't be rushed.

After a leisurely lunch sitting on the rocks, we wandered along the path towards the "squeaking" sands and Leo jumped in every puddle  and burn that he could find.  Soon the air rang with the screams of a soggy and cold child, though for all of this he still kept jumping in the puddles.

We wandered on admiring the beautiful landscape surrounding us with the trees and bracken displaying their beautiful autumnal plumage.

We found the most amazing cold burn flowing under a bridge and Leo decided that he wanted in it, so being an evil uncle I lowered him down into it, you've never seen feet retract out of water so quickly in your life.  When I then put my feet in it I discovered why. ... the water was unbelievably cold.

Some time later we finally reached the "Squeaking sands and all had great fun shuffling about making them squeak under our feet.

We even managed to get a photo of the lesser spotted Sarah in a photo though the even lesser spotted Susan still evaded capture.

Sadly though the day was drawing in and it was far too quickly time to head back to the car for the return journey.

Some people bring back a souvenir from a visit to the beach; in this case, my souvenir was a Leo limpet  hanging onto my back.  He was too tired to walk himself but still had enough energy to insist that I went faster.