Strath Brora

We took a road trip today to explore Strath Brora. 'Road trip' is a lovely term which we associate with happy holidays in Canada but whereas those trips often involved several days and many hundreds of miles along Canada's superb road network, and nights in well-appointed motels, our trip was a mere twenty-five miles, most of it along....

....single-track roads with occasional passing places. Compared to the A9 which passes through Golspie, busy these days with both its usual traffic of heavy goods vehicles and white vans, and further packed with cars and camper vans following the North Coast 500 tourist route, this was blissfully empty, the biggest problem as a driver being to keep one's eyes on the road amidst....

....such stunning scenery.

This is Loch Brora, an elongate lake filling the lower reaches of the strath, a strath being a term used on the east and north coasts of Scotland to mean a wide valley, much the same as the term glen except a glen is usually steeper-sided.

Upstream the road started running along the Brora river which winds its way through rich farmland but which is probably better known as....

....one of the area's premier salmon waters. We walked along its banks, stopping to watch the fishermen casting their flies. To the left of the picture, on the edge of the river, a license-holder casts his line under the supervision of his gillie, who is employed to offer him advice on tackle and tactics as well as on where and how to fish these waters. To the right are their cars: I leave it to you to work out which is whose.

While taking a rest on one of the many benches provided for weary fishermen we talked to one - his rather expensive Land Rover is on the left of this picture. He obviously knew these waters as he didn't have a gillie, and he was commenting on how poor the fishing is: the waters are very low this year following an unusually dry summer.

The strath is rich in birds of prey. We watched four buzzards wheeling and calling high above the woodland on the side of the valley in the company of a smaller raptor, perhaps a sparrowhawk, and minutes later we spotted a red kite hunting low across the heather.

The single-track road followed the Brora river until we were almost due north of Golspie when it began to circle back, giving us a final view of the upper reaches of Strath Brora before taking us home, via Backies and Golspie Tower.