The Morning Ferry

The sun made a considerable effort to pierce the cloud this morning to give us a warm sunrise but soon gave up, leaving behind a horizon-to-horizon blanket of very grey stratus.

The 10.15 ferry to Tobermory was busy, with three cars and upward of a dozen passengers. The larger Loch Linnhe has been on duty recently but today's service saw the usual winter ferry, the Raasay, doing the honours. The cars which appear in the picture to be arriving are in fact departing: they have to back down onto the Raasay.

The passenger were in for a fairly bumpy ride across the Sound, with a stiff but warm southerly blowing.  Mrs Diary was on her way across to visit the dentist, but I walked home through the village, pausing....

....to record the daily eagle fly-past - this is a sea eagle, perhaps the same one as came over our house a couple of days ago. All the gulls and crows got up and made a fuss, but not with as much noise....

....as when a helicopter came low across the village. I think we've seen this machine before, checking the power lines for problems, but it continued straight down the Sound.

As the wind went round the overcast thickened enough for the land to grow dark, while the cloud itself seemed to be pouring in from the southwest in such quantity that, like a slipping carpet that meets an obstruction, it was folding up on itself. The croft house in the picture is Ben Hiant.

The gnarled hawthorn below Meall mo Chridhe had one decoration on it a few days ago, now it's festooned with tinsel - like an old lady dressed in her youthful finery.

Just before the turn to the lighthouse, Portuairk and Sanna a dead rabbit lies by the side of the road. It's unusual enough to merit a picture. At one time, so those who remember the area several decades ago say, rabbits were plentiful, particularly at Sanna, and twenty years ago we used to see families of them playing on the grass opposite the Ferry Stores. Now they're uncommon, and their demise, whatever the reason, may go some way towards explaining the decline in wildcat numbers.