Scotland Tour: A little cottage near Scourie and a riverside adventure

by thetinypotager

We arrive at our holiday cottage, a little north of Scourie, in the late afternoon. It is early April and spring has sprung in the mountains. The little garden is carpeted with daffodils and, just beyond, a small wooden gate leads out to the river bank.

The skies are still blue, and the trees are filled with blossom. The visitor book in the hallway states that eagles can be regularly spotted here, and I keep glancing around, just in case.

Our children are glad to run around and stretch their legs after so much travel and we agree that the only thing we are missing is a little boat to row over to that island in the middle of the river. It would make a brilliant picnic and bird watching spot.

When the children climb into the trees, they are fascinated by the lichen, crisp and crumbly, and then purposefully step around it to leave it intact. My daughter, in her baby carrier, leans over and runs her fingers through the fronds.

A pathway leads us upstream. We spot another route on the opposite bank, in the lea of a small rocky fell, and decide we will definitely cross the bridge a little way away and explore the other side tomorrow. Our eldest son takes care of his younger brother, holding his safety reign, and my husband keeps a hold of a hand and reigns of our profoundly autistic youngest son, who has an acute fascination with running water.

We reach the bridge, where the water cascades, white and foamy, around huge outcrops of imposing rock. The spray covers our faces if we get closer. Our youngest son is utterly exhilarated by the thunderous noise, which we not only hear but also feel in tremors beneath our feet, and impulsively throws his favourite toy right into the centre of the rapids!

He has no comprehension that it is now floating off to the Atlantic Ocean. Our son is usually silent, but now he is shouting with delight, cheering his toy on.

My husband manages, incredibly, to fish toy Woody out of a swirling eddy and back safely onto dry land using a large fallen branch.

We head back inside, and Woody dries out in front of the lovely warm aga whilst we brew a cup of tea. We all perch on stools and enjoy the view from the kitchen window of the gently meandering sea loch.

Next we are packing the car again – although only with warm coats, hats, scarves, mittens and wellies this time. We are off to watch the sun setting over Durness beach. It will be the first time that any of us have seen the northern-most coast of Britain.

45 Comments

    1. Gosh can you imagine if we hadn’t? I think the nearest Disney store was probably Edinburgh, about 4-5 hours away 😮 ((when we did get to Edinburgh, our son tried to float Woody off the top of the castle … we spend a lot of time rescuing that little toy! 🙂))

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    1. Thank you! I will take a look – I haven’t read it but it sounds perfect. I’m about to finish the book Highland River, a biography of a soldier returning to his childhood highland river – I think your recommendation would be the perfect follow-up x 🌿

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    1. Hi Gerard – an aga is a big old fashioned ranged oven. They can be hooked up as the boiler for the house too. The joy is that they are then constantly hot and toasty. We found it was great for drying out boots (and toys) and we all tended to gather chairs around it, if we hadn’t lit the log fires.)

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  11. Lovely, heartwarming post. Glad you could rescue Woody 🙏🏻 We also stayed in Scourie before we headed further North. I could pack and travel the same stretch again now after having seen your photos. Looking forward to rest! 😊

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    1. We fell in love with Scourie so much that the moment we had a break in work in the autumn (we’re self employed) – we rushed back there! I have a notebook full of everywhere we didn’t have time to see – so we need to go back a lot more times too! 🙂 🌿

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  12. What an idyllic place and the cottage sounds just the perfect cosy place… So pleased your hubby managed to fish out Woody, I am sure no doubt your Son would have missed him dearly if he had swam right out into the Atlantic!…
    SO loving this series,
    Did you get Frost this morning??? Loved waking up to sparkling frost with some blue skies for a change..
    Enjoy the rest of your week Mrs TP.

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    1. We have had the frosts – I do have some photos I need to work on from a very frosty sunday morning walk in the forest. A lovely crunch underfoot that day! (If you are on Instagram, a few of the pics are up there already on tinypotager) …..I’ve just seen the dire storm warnings from 6pm tomorrow …. eeek! I’d better get the terracotta pots into shelter 🙂

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      1. Yes we have had the weather warnings of the storm… And no I am not on Instagram or FB… too many irons in the fire as it is.. LOL… And yes you will need to tie down and batten down the hatches as they say… Stay Safe all of you.. ❤

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          1. Hi Dear Mrs TP, Yes it was a horrendous storm here too… Fences and trees down in neighbouring gardens… Our home garden unscathed thankfully… Hubby went to Allotment this morning to check on sheds and greenhouse.. Two panes of glass out and broken in the greenhouse, he’s fixed one and the other covered with some plastic until he can mend it properly with glass.. So we are very lucky when you compare the flooding and damage it has done in other places.. Thank you for asking..
            Hope all is well with you??

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                    6. Haha… So Dislike rubbish snow, Mrs TP, and I am with your children on that one… If its going to snow, I love it when you can roll huge snow balls to make snowmen… and go sledging.. 🙂 We woke up to a sprinkle, but it melted this morning and its sleeted on and off to day… 🙂 Hope your week is going well.. ❤

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  13. Pingback: Scotland Tour: Durness, Loch Eriboll, the Kyle of Tongue and Altnaharra – The Tiny Potager

  14. A lovely post and I couldn’t help but wonder why your son threw Woody into the churning water? Perhaps he thought Woody would enjoy the experience of swimming in the water in place of your son?

    (BTW Apple’s Catalina software updated my computer overnight and I can now press the LIKE button direct on your site’s home page and make a comment without having to continually log in to WordPress on every blog site I follow. Am I premature in thinking my ”problem’ has magically disappeared overnight? I seem to remember you saying you had to use the Reader for a similar ‘WordPress’ problem to mine).

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    1. Yes! You are spot on Vicki 🙂 My son often sends Woody in as a test pilot before doing things himself. (Thank goodness really!) Today I was letting him try using garden tools, and he insisted that Woody try them all out first 🙂

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  15. Pingback: Scotland Tour: Hiking in the wild North West – The Tiny Potager

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