Day 9, Fri 7th Oct 2011

Falls of Shin and then Nigg.

Woke to a beautiful day so off we set, early for us, to the Falls of Shin. It had a very good write up. Turned out to be a very commercialised attraction but at least the car park was free and so was the visit to the falls. Quite a walk down to the actual falls for the old raspberries but they got there in the end! Mike found some steps for me to go down so that I was right by the water. We saw one or two salmon jumping in the river but none tried to go up the falls which they are famous for. Still it was a beautiful warm day and lovely scenery.

Left is the last bit of the falls into the pool.
This is me at the Falls of Shin as Sue says there are not nearly enough pictures of me in this blog!!!




Just goes to prove that Mike will put his finger in any hole, (right) even if it is wooden Ha ha!!!.














Left is the steps above the main falls for the salmon to go on climbing

We then went back home to the cottage for lunch.

Sue did not fancy going out in the afternoon so Mike and I set out to look at a very large flock of Whooper Swans that we could see from the cottage, must have been over 1,000 of them?

From there we decided to go and find some metal pillars that had appeared in sight of where we were staying. It turned out to be what you can see below and is an oil rig repair area in the Cromarty Firth.

We also found a RSPB reserve near Nigg, apparently the Nigg to Cromarty ferry is the smallest vehicle in the world, or so they claim!

One question from Mike! He was wondering what you call the people who "live in Nigg" I will leave you to draw your own conclusions?

Left are the oil rigs in for repair.

More of these next Tuesday?

So back home again and the noise in the car is starting to scream at us so I decide reluctantly to take it to the local garage. Turns out to be a wheel bearing gone and he will order the part for fitting next Tuesday afternoon and advises that we can use the car but would not advise going very far in it. Looks like a less busy time for the next few days. I am sure we will enjoy the rest so just doing shopping and a max of 15 miles distance at a time.