Summer? Isles

What do you do on a rainy day? Go for a ride on the local  bus, try to see the scenery and have cake and  coffee.

There are some stunning mountains and lochs that look a bit like Tasmania out there somewhere along the narrow one lane road to Achiltibuie, north west of Ullapool.

The Piping School Hall cafe at Achiltibuie has lots of excellent yummy cakes, real loose tea in a pot and fabulous views of the Summer Isles - yes, that is the name of those islands out there.

Don't let rain put you off. It always stops. It did stop while we went for a wee walk. (There's a lesson about life there)

The next day - no rain, just cloud

We did a 2 1/2 hour boat trip with about a dozen other passengers to the Summer Isles. Was someone having a joke when they named this group of 26 small islands? "Summer"? Really? My fingers were so cold the tips went from pink to red to white to bluish purple. I could not feel them or the camera at all. I am not complaining. I could have stayed inside and been warm but I wanted to take photos!

We saw common seals

 And a white tailed sea eagle - on the dead tree.

 And Atlantic grey seals

And rocky uninhabited islands

A cave where the devote local Catholic Christians rowed their boats inside at low tide so they could worship in secret during the Reformation years in the 1500s.

The largest and only inhabited island is privately owned. It has a fish farm in its bay and several houses.

The Summer Isles are not so named because they have warmer, more summery weather than other parts of Scotland. The name came about because farmers used to swim cattle over to some of them for grazing during the not so cold season, the one known as summer.