Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

Pics snapped, we hustled on out of Durness, heading south (not much choice really!), planning on sticking to the coast road as far as Unapool, then going west on the B869 towards the Old Man of Stoer. The route was one that Jason spoke of with a glint in his eye, so I knew it wasnt going to be one I'd particularly enjoy - which was confirmed by a quick look at the map, which showed no less than 8 gradient warning arrows in a 5 mile stretch of one road! Couple that with the fact that as classifications go, this road is shown as a single track with passing places, there's snow on the ground and its still falling, plus apparently there's a salmon farm at the end of the road which means theres lorries chundering up and down it all the time, I really couldn't wait!

The journey was everything I expected it to be, but happily we didn't meet any oncoming lorries. And scary journeys aside, the views we got of the mountains once we were out close to the Point of Stoer were absolutely stunning.

As ever, the time had got away from us and it was getting dark quickly. There was no way we were going to get to 'civilisation' in daylight, so we decided to press on for the Stoer Point lighthouse, theorising that the end of the road must surely have at least a turning circle if not a car park, so we could hole up there for the night. And we were right :-) The lighthouse itself isn't manned anymore, although it is still operational. Theres also a car park as the walk to the Old Man (a huge great sea stack) starts from this point. We checked out the wind direction and parked Moglet with her nose into it, tucked into the corner of the bank as much as we could to get whatever shelter was available - they don't tend to put lighthouses in particularly hospitable places, and this one wasnt any different! We were still pretty close to the edge, as you can see from the picture, but we were in a good little corner, and Jason even put one of our levelling blocks of wood as a chock under a back wheel, just in case... The cliff edge had possibly the most dramatic and quite frankly scary sea action going on I've ever seen, it was proper massive great waves crashing one after another onto the coastline, pounding themselves into a frothy mass, not even getting the chance to retreat before the next line of waves would assault the rocks. We both just stood there watching for a few minutes, feeling very small and insignificant.

With the light fading fast, and a nasty looking weather front moving in on the horizon, we decided to have a little look around the lighthouse grounds and then turn in for the night. The old lightkeepers cottage is a National Trust building that you can rent out for holidays, but you'd really have to enjoy your solitude to want to spend a week there! Plus we had a peek in the windows and no open fires of rustic-ness to it at all, it was all very bland, generic unexciting stuff. To each their own, I guess. Cracking views from the top though, and weirdly very little wind. A few more pictures taken and that was us done for the night. We turned in, made some tea and had an early night, looking forward to tomorrows journey.