So we have been staying (for the 4th year running!) at Clachtoll Beach Campsite, stunningly located in the Northwest highlands of Scotland.

We’ve said before that it’s very unusual for us to visit the same place more than once, but this little piece of paradise continues to be an exception. It keeps calling us back year after year.

We have been up this way during various visits in February, May, August, September, November and now April, and staying at this wonderful campsite for a week or more at the end Aug / beg Sept (twice), May and on this trip, April.

For the weather the end of Aug into the beginning of Sept has worked out best for us so far. April has been “challenging”.

Arriving around 5pm on Saturday the 13th (at least it wasn’t Friday the 13th!) we almost ended up in the divorce court whilst putting up our tent in wind gusts of well over 30mph (and trust us, it felt like much more than 30mph!)

I usually get the easy job with the Bell tent of putting in the centre pole and holding it in place while Paul loosely pegs out the base of the tent and a couple of guy-lines. Then I fit the tent carpet, put up the A-poles at the door and Paul finishes it off and re-pegs everything more securely.

In this wind, that didn’t quite work out! This time we had brought a carpet that fits the whole of the tent, rather than just a smaller carpet for the front half. Trying to slide this carpet under the centre pole just wasn’t happening, and ended up with the centre pole collapsing due to the wind gusts. Then the rain came on, we left the tent on the ground and sheltered in the car until the rain had passed.

In the end, with a somewhat wet tent both outside and inside, we got the darn thing up, with the carpet folded in half and placed only in the front half of the tent (we gave up on trying to get it under the centre pole).

Once the tent was securely set up (with a bit of help from the people pitched next to us) we got sorted out, started to relax, and heated up our curries for dinner that we had brought from our local Indian takeaway.

We waited until the wind had settled just a little bit before setting up our wood burning stove in the tent. Once that was done, we were toasty! We had brought an electric blanket for the airbed (thankfully) as we had booked a pitch with electric hook up, so with the stove and electric blanket we were cosy. And it was just as well. The temperatures haven’t gone into double figures yet and now it’s Wednesday (so 5 days on). It has been a particularly cold April this year.

This time we have been pretty unlucky with the weather. Not only has it been very windy (and cold), but it has also been fairly wet, although we did have some very sunny (though cold) weather the next morning.

On Sunday we had a fairly relaxing day with just a couple of short walks from the campsite to the “broch” at Stour and to the “split rock” at Clachtoll. It was sunny, but still very windy.

We had booked an early dinner at Peets in Lochinver, and once back we just chilled for the rest of the evening and then had an early night. My pizza from Peets was big enough that I had leftovers for lunch the next day! We got to use our new stove oven to try it out and heat up the leftover pizza.

Monday was a day of mixed weather. It was still way to windy for kayaking, so we walked to Achmelvich beach (where we would normally paddle to). It was quite nice to see everything from a difficult perspective. We attempted to walk the coastal route, but got ourselves in a right pickle. Scottish paths are often little more than sheep tracks, and I’m still not sure quite where we went wrong, but we lost the path altogether. After backtracking, we used the much better and more well-used path, and although it was slightly more inland, it was easy to follow.

Despite the on/off showers, Achmelvich was as beautiful as ever when we arrived.

On Tuesday the weather was still very windy and unsettled, so we chose a walk we had done before. We parked up in Lochinver and did the loop walk along the River Inver and across the moorland, eventually coming out on the rough road that leads to / from the route up the mountain called Suilven (a BIG walk, which we have never done – from certain angles it looks like the Sugar Loaf Mountain in Brazil). This is a lovely walk to do in Spring, with the beautiful yellow gorse adding some wonderful colour to the already stunning scenery.

After our walk we stopped at the An Cala Cafe (& Bunkhouse) for lunch, then bought a couple of pies from the now famous Lochinver Larder, to bring back and reheat for dinner. Yum!

Today (Wednesday) we finally got a relatively calm day, and hoped to kayak. We walked to the beach to check the sea state, but the waves were still crashing as it hadn’t calmed down from the previous days of wild weather.

We spoke to Denise at the campsite (by the way, have I mentioned yet her amazing home baking? – I digress, but have to give this a mention! She bakes most days and sells some lovely scones, cakes, cheesecake etc in the campsite shop for a very reasonable price). Anyway, we were talking to her about hoping to kayak, but being worried about the sea state, and she told us of a perfect place which, although in the sea, was sheltered by lots of islands.

This place was on the Drumbeg Loop, about 20 mins drive from the campsite. So we headed there and set out in the kayak. We passed so many seals bathing on the rocks. Easily 50-100 of them. As we kayaked past, most of them slipped into the water and swam around us. Several followed us for a while as we headed on the a sandy beach on a nearby island for our picnic.

We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere. A paradise. We saw no other kayakers, or indeed people, until we got back and there was one lady in doing some cold water swimming (rather her than us!)

It was a fantastic day! We finished up with a meal in the hotel/pub in Lochinver.

Tomorrow’s weather forecast is pretty awful, so no plans as yet. We shall see when we wake up. High winds, heavy rain… At least we got to go out kayaking today, and to somewhere new that we hadn’t kayaked before, so we are happy about that. We shall see what tomorrow brings…