From Caves to Coast

This morning we were on the move swiftly, pausing only for a pot of tea before donning waterproofs and setting off to find the Inchnadamph bone caves. The path took us past a chambered cairn, which we paused to examine. Thus beguiled from the path we strayed into botany, spotting various interesting plants such as mountain thyme, sundew, some beautiful potentillas with silver leaf edges and others we couldn't identify.
Reclaiming our attention from the flora we resumed the walk, accompanied by larks ascending all over the place and a pair of buzzards courting high over the ridge across the valley. We paused to breakfast in the shelter of some trees, then pushed on towards Cnoc nan Uamh, the Hill of Caves, where we could already see a cave mouth beckoning.
After a further half mile or so across a landscape pocked with sinkholes and sometimes unnervingly hollow underfoot, we reached the caves. Inside a wide, steeply slanted entrance a veritable torrent of white water was hurtling through the cave - we admired with awe from a safe distance, jaws dropped, before retreating slightly to have a steadying cup of tea from a flask.
The second cave we reached was much less staggering, being a gently-dripping affair some seven or eight feet high rather than a dizzying fifteen or twenty feet down in rapids; we could hear the river from beyond the cave's first chamber but since we lacked equipment, skill and inclination to take up serious spelunking, we went no further than daylight would reach! It was, surprisingly, colder inside the cave than outside in the wind-driven rain in the valley.
Having satisfied our cave-dwelling impulses for the time being we carried on up to the top of the ridge and enjoyes stunning views right down the length of Loch Assynt to the hills beyond. Deer were grazing on the heights north of the valley, a good 500 feet higher than our best efforts.
Returning to the Kite Wagon parked in Inchnadamph village, it was all change on the clothes front despite our waterproofs, then eastward on the road to Dornoch. Yet again the Kite performed superbly, handling single track roads, cattle grids and passing places as to the manner born. We stopped at one point to offer assistance to four young tourists who'd fared less carefully and ended up parked five feet down a steep bank, but they were all safe and had a phone signal to summon a tow-truck so thanked us and declined further assistance.
Dornoch is as far as we want to go for now, so we're parked overlooking the Dornoch Firth in the local caravan park, where laundry and hot showers were delightful. Despite the zig-zagging across the countryside the disel tank is still half-full from Tyndrum; we'll top off tomorrow at a garage we spotted on the A9 just past the Dornoch turning, then aim for Forsinard RSPB reserve in the Flow Country before ending tomorrow's adventures near the ferry terminal for Orkney.