Starting off with the trip to Skipness, Sat a beautiful sunny day not a cloud in the Sky perfect for what i had in mind which was to go over the hills to Skipness which is around 30 miles on the east side of the peninsular and use the Isle of Arran hills as a backdrop for some pics of Skipness. After 7 miles I was on the coast road and ahead of me was the dreaded mist over the hills and sea" humph" thought I it might lift on the other side of the hills , FAT CHANCE, after 15 miles it was much thicker and it was obvious long views were out for this day. I took the pic above from the top of the hills going over, it really is beautiful up here but with all the conflicting light its quite difficult to put into a pic. The next pics are at the ferry terminal which is now closed for the Winter.

You want remote, this is remote , I was just partaking of a sandwich in front of the village post office when I realized my Wife was missing, looked up and there she was just a pimple in the distance

This is a pic which shows where my main pic area is for sunsets , the west loch and loch an add which are located at the back of the hills in the highlighted area, to the left of the pic is the first route upto the lochs which is a straight upward climb and a bit of a lung buster the second route on the right cuts up and through the forest in a zig zag way and joins the first route near the top of the main climb, it takes a bit less wind and strain and gives a few photo opportunities in the forest.The weather over the Lochs as a rule of thumb can be judged from the highlighted bit of sky, it quite frequently is raining or hailing on this side of the hill so I use this patch of sky to decide what to do because it can be quite nice once your over the hill.

The next waterfall I came to would normally be non existant or innaccesible due to foilage,this will go down as my most dangerously obtained pic, it isn't brilliant but there will not be a lot of this about in peoples albums. The ground fell away steeply just off the Vertical for around 15ft the ground was soft wet and swampy covered in low dead vegetation and moss, there was nothing that was strong enough to grab hold off, I slowly inched down about 15 foot to within 2 foot off the edge of the bank which sheared off into a gorge which was around 15 foot deep with rocks and seething waters at the bottom, one slip and you could get seriously beaten up, I got into a crouch to try to get stable to take a pic but with the ground so squishy it was difficult to keep steady, there were twigs across my view I managed to clear the immediate area but I must admit I was afraid to move any more, I lost a lot of the pics to blur and I lost some because the auto focus locked onto twigs and blurred the falls but at least I managed one.

After edging gingerly back to the forest track I started to walk up to two more accessible falls, and now we have the TV moment, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT ?? easy, the water disappeared and became no more than a drip from a tap, I can only assume that the canal water board had shut the valve on the top Loch AHHHhh well no more falls onward and upward to the Lochs. The following pics need little explanation they are pics of the different formations over the Two Lochs in the last ten days and I will put in any comments that seem appropriate.

and i could not resist the sound of rushing water for the second pic on the way home

these water pics were taken on really bad days mainly for the experiance

caught this swirly water when I was outward bound

these pics were taken on the last two outings

Well the sun has truly set on this adventure, did I find my WOW pic? well I'm afraid not, some good ones that I really like but nothing that has matched the pic in my head. Did I learn anything ?? I found that I prefer dramatic skies with lots of contrast and that one picture of clouds with a translucent effect in a kind of pastel shade contrast can be as dramatic as the intense colours of a full blown sunset and I think I am beginning to know my camera backwards and certainly got more used to the enigmas of software. So the search continues for eldorado. Hope you have enjoyed this little jaunt so until the Spring or the wow wow wow enjoy the coming festivities and keep on snapping. Bye For now. P.S got lured out halfway through doing the text for this by some really stormy weather that had possibilities and ended up with these three pics.