One day on Purple Spurt I saw an unusual casting from Cheryl Elizabeth, she said she was happy to bus it up to Scotland overnight then do a shoot and bus it back home again. To be honest I couldn’t think of a worse thing to do but then I’m not keen on buses. It so happened that I had a my eye on a several locations up near Inverness way that I always wanted to do but it was impractical due to driving distances. However I thought that I could meet Cheryl up at Inverness and visit the locations on the way back to Dundee, I could combine some work the previous day, stay overnight, meet Cheryl then shoot….it seemed like a plan!

So we organised it for early September, and come the day before the shoot I travelled up, did a bit of work, stayed overnight at the Kingsmill Hotel…….which was horredously expensive and I got food poisoning there. Off to a fine start!

The next day it was wet and rather gray in the typical Scottish shitty weather kinda way, it rained and rained then at the last hour before picking up Cheryl it stopped and promised to clear up a bit. I wasn’t picking Cheryl up til 11:30 which meant that it was going to be a bit of rushed shoot but I knew I’d get at least two of the locations done and that was the main thing.

I did promised to meet Cheryl at the bus station in a pink onesie but I have to say I declined to follow through on that one! I’m sure she was very disappointed about that when I met her 😉

Anyways we met up, loaded up the car and headed off to Tescos for munchables and water, then scooted of to the first location. Now normally the road to the Loch Ruthven is quite picturesque but today it was completely shrouded in cloud, the mountains and cliff faces had completely disappeared. And as this was Cheryl’s first trip to Scotland I gave her a loan of a camera and landscape lens so she could take shots as well, because we all know the scenery is stunning, erm except today. On the way the clouds started to lift a little over the lochs and the views were getting a little mysterious, and as if by magic when we got to the first location the scene was perfect.

 

But the main reason for this location is that the loch had small sandy beaches and…boats…

The other bonus was that it was warm….so we headed off to the other side of the loch to another little boat house and boat.

Then just round the corner was another little sandy beach…

Now  Loch Ruthven is a bird sanctuary and has a bird hide which is normally quiet on occasions, due to the weather and the time of day I reckoned it would be fairly devoid of people. Except that it wasn’t and poor Cheryl got caught by passersby, however they were quite open minded and shouted compliments. I thought there’s bound to be more people coming, perhaps now is a good time to scuttle off to the next location….

So we jump in the car and zoom off to Suidhe Viewpoint, by the time we got there the clouds had lifted and the air was very still. If was a little bit a of hill climb, a gentle slope and well worn path…..a path from which we would deviant for privacy reasons and for scenic views.

It’s not long before the path levels out into a rugged plateau, which is handy but also a tad boggy.

Moving onto other rocks and scenes….with lots of ‘poky bum sticks’ as Cheryl called them. In other words last years heather stalks..lol

More scenes with rocks…and poky bum sticks….

Moving on to a cliff edge…….

Nearly at the end of the path we came across two wild stags grazing just below us….we stopped to take some pictures.

 

At the end of the path we had to rush a little as time was marching on and so were some people heading our way….but we managed to bag some images at the summit.

With time marching we had to rush back down to the car and drive all of 5 minutes to the nearest loch for the next location which was slightly tricky to get to once we were out of the car.

By this time it really was time to get going, besides, we were getting eaten alive by super angry midges!…..before we left I managed to get this portrait which I softened to match the sunlight.

 

There was now a 3 hour drive back home as Cheryl had to get the 20:30 bus back home from Dundee. but it gave us a huge operchancity to have in depth conversations and get to know each other. The car drive home was a bit of a marathon but I had some great company and I have to say…..what a lovely person Cheryl is, just one of the nicest persons you’d ever want to meet. Apart from getting stonkingly good images I had a fabulous time with a fabulous person, what more could you ask from an adventure in the Highlands. Hopefully more adventures at another time 🙂