I flew to Inverness on the 6th, with Jill to follow on the 11th. The trip itself is to introduce Jill to some of the highlights I found on my recent trips: Glen Affric, Skye, Ullapool; nothing original there I guess. I traveled early, to make my own mini-NC500, what I term my North Coast 250 (well, it is 250 miles, just about, ignoring diversions, track-backs, etc).

To get off to a good start, to get out of Inverness, but not go too far in case of jetlag, my first stop was booked for Kildary. I was able to have lunch in my favorite cafe, Velocity in Inverness. This and all the eating I had done on the plane and before, meant I didn’t need dinner and after checking in with the B&B, I had the energy to go out and look for photographs. I didn’t arrive with a plan, but my host gave me a few good suggestions. Sadly, my sense of navigation hadn’t arrived and I seemed to be in an area where there were lots of roads going all over the place, everywhere except for where I wanted to go.

Eventually I made it to the coast, at Portmahomack; started all the familiar actions to get the camera set up and a scene composed, and my tripod had a fail; I pulled all the legs out as usual, only one segment didn’t stop, and the collar was at risk of disappearing – not a good thing when you are standing on a beach. I was able to get the leg back together and hopefully I’ll be able to keep that segment, and its peers, extended, so I don’t have to risk a repeat.

Back at the B&B, my battery problems of recent trips insisted on repeating; I had brought an adapter to allow me to charge multiple devices, not to mention camera batteries, at the same time, and it basically blew up. I only brought one US to UK adapter plug, so now I was down to only charging one device at a time. If I prioritize my wifi-hub/backup-battery (bought to back up my camera’s SD cards to my iPad) then I should be able to handle any emergencies during the day, but…