Sheet cloud cover with the sun burning great holes through from 4:30 am.
What a dawn sky.
A stormy night with not a lot of rain luckily as with the tent pegs in sand the wind kept pulling out those holding the awning threatening my boots with getting wet (not good). So the sleep included lots of wakes due to loud flapping and replace the pegs in ground, some when during early hours the wind abated (hooray).
Pack early as it was a truly beautiful dawn the remaining showers creating a rainbow in the strengthening sunshine, streaks of sand in the shelter behind pebbles on the sea shore showing the strength and direction of the nights wind.
It wasnt long before the first great moment of the day, coming across a colony of nesting Arctic turns, theses dissuade critters (including humans) from wandering across their patch by plenty of shreeking while diving to peck at and shit on said critter, a wonderful first for me!
One turn hit my hat but luckily missed seymore the tortoise.
Wandering along parts of the A9 at this hour were not much of a problem, the traffic level being surprisingly low, the trail of lonesome gloves continues (single gloves assumedly dropped by mistake), what has been evident since fort william is the wonderful scenic routes taken by railways in the highlands, so what a pleasure it would be to ride those routes some time.
There has been a rumour of 600 cycles leaving john o groats today but so far i have seen no sign of them, one wall where i stopped for a snack had small lizards crawling in and out of its joints, at another rest stop a car stopped to offer me a lift, i felt ungrateful declining but explained i must walk all the way.
Have a space promised in the youth hostel tonight so can cook a heap of pasta, grease the feet, have a shave and charge this phone, all to get me to the end in hopefully good shape.
LeJogPlod Reader 