North West of Scotland – Polin Croft

We spent a week in a small cottage called Polin Croft, in a small hamlet called Polin. If you click the link you can see photos of its location on a map and photo. There were just a few houses around us and crofting land with some sheep and we saw some wild deer too. Further north than where we were staying was only a dozen croft houses and then the moorland wilderness of Cape Wrath.

Each day the weather was different, with sunshine, driving rain, rain showers, hail, sleet, blowing a hoolie! Typical west coast weather, it rains the majority of days on this coast (265 days per year on average). It’s hard to spot this on global maps but we are further north than Juneau, Alaska here! If it wasn’t for the Gulf Stream the weather would be totally different.

Polin has its own beach and we walked down to it everyday for a walk. On the days when there had been heavy rains the river running down the beach limited our access to the full beach. Ylva enjoyed running around off the lead which is a rare occurrence because of her not being trusted around other dogs, so she loved having the beach to herself.

These next two photos were taken at 9.37am! It looks more like a sunset the sun is so low.

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We had some days where it was so calm the lochs were like mirrors and other days it was blowing a hoolie and it was a struggle to stand up! On the really windy wet days my phone stayed in my pocket, so no photos of Ylva’s tail blowing horizontal in the wind!

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I collected some nylon rope bits and other rubbish most days that had been washed up each day with the seaweed. I wish the government would do something to ban it being used.

On Oldshoremore beach, which is one bay over from Polin, there were cows grazing seaweed on the beach.

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One cow was actually chewing a big bit of frayed plastic rope. This gave me nightmares for a couple of nights. If I lived local I would be there everyday picking some up and I’m sure there are locals that do it but the volume is just so much. 😢 You can see on the first photo below some cow poop and this is where they were grazing on plastic loaded seaweed. So sad and so frustrating.

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Anyway, back to gorgeous views. Allistar walked out to a small island that is accessible at low tide and took some photos looking back at Oldshoremore beach and on one you can see Polin beach as well.

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We drove down to Scourie on one of the days and brrr it was much colder that day. So here I am wrapped up in my many layers, my handspun, hand knit and hand felted Bricks and Mortar cowl and my Herriot Hat….snug as a bug! I look enormous but there were a lot of layers being worn including thermals this day.

So that’s my blog post, there are lots more photos that we took of the glorious beaches and some videos of Ylva running about off lead, which is such a rarity because of her hatred of other dogs. She was at the vets today having some teeth removed and some lumps on her gums removed so she is feeling very sorry for herself and I think running free on the beach is a distant memory. Hopefully she’ll be feeling better soon and enjoying one of our nearer beaches.