"under construction" Achmelvich by celia.q

(I can't believe it is so long since I went to Achmelvich. I'm not even sure of the year any more and have had to try and work out when it was from the car that I went in!)

Every summer, from 1967, when my first born was just over a year old, until both children were teenagers we took a caravan to Achmelvich for several weeks from first Biggar, and later Perth. From Biggar it was a mammoth journey, we had to stop over night on the way and set up the caravan in a lay-by or maybe a field if we were lucky. From Perth we could set off really early and get there in one day, stopping for breakfast near Aviemore and eating hard boiled eggs while looking at pockets of snow on the mountains where the sun never got for long enough to melt it. The journey isn't anything like so arduous nowadays, then a lot of the roads north of Perth were single track and all of them were single track north of Inverness. That kinda slows you down a bit!

Once there, we were free, the beach was our back yard and the sea our adventure and, to some extent, our larder. While the children were little the caravan site was safe from traffic and there were always families with children for playmates and picnics. When they were bigger there was always something to do that they hadn't been big enough to do last year.

• Pros:space and fresh air.
• Cons:can't think of any.
• In a nutshell:"Far from the madding crowd"