[Photos] UK 33 - Loch Morlich, Glenmore, continued.

[moonvoice]

Blessed Winter Solstice (and Summer Solstice, for those in the Northern Hemisphere).

Today, Mum and I went to Dome Cafe, as is fairly normal for us on a Friday morning. I also finished the season finale of Sarazanmai and cried over it and then watched it again and then cried again and then watched it with Glen and cried a third time. It was really good. Also I cry really easily at things.

I'm slowly reading The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman and I finished a book on Orkney Folktales last night and am now reading Letters From Hamnavoe by George Mackay Brown.


Loch Morlich, Glenmore.




We looked for interesting stones, and then gave them all back to the water.





I wish I could see this place in the snow, in person. Because I think that would be quite something. But it was quite something like this too.



The light was crisp and bright, gleaming on every surface it touched.



Cold and quiet. It advertised sea sports and kayaking, but it was deserted aside from less than a handful of other people. Birdsong was everywhere.



The skies were huge, reminding me of Perth.



I talked quietly to the land, and it talked quietly back. It sent ripples and breezes, scars of snow on mountains and fat doves. It sent birds I didn't recognise, and the quivering thin branches of trees whose names I didn't know.



The sand crunched underfoot. Ducks paddled nearby, watching us warily, alongside seabirds. A sign said 'no campfires' and a little ways past it, we found signs of a campfire.



The world was big and inviting. Glenmore opened her arms and let me fall in, and gave me back to myself at the end.









I walked in the water, wetting my sneakers, but I wanted really to swim in the cold water.





Goodbye, Loch Morlich.

Comments

[sundog]

What absolute stunning scenery.

[cmcmck]

I strongly recommend Mackay Brown's collected verse.

[silverjackal]

If you did not provide context for these photos I could think them somewhere here. We have such skies, and the cold blue of water and wind. It's lovely, and I completely understand your attraction to the place.

[moonvoice]

It was incredible, I'd very much like to go back.

[moonvoice]

Definitely! Tbh he has like a billion books, but I got the Letters from Hamnavoe specifically because I want to set a book in Orkney and wanted a more prose-like sense of what it's like there (I'm writing a book set on a fictional Orkney island, and one of the reasons I went in the first place was for research.)

[moonvoice]

Oh that's so wonderful though, tbh it only makes me want to visit Canada more (and it has always been high on my list).