Old Man of Stoer

Every since my first trip up to Ullapool to visit my wee brother I've had an urge to run out along the cliffs from the light house to the Old Man of Stoer; yesterday that urge was satisfied in style.
I woke to clear blue skies, blazing sunshine but with a crisp 2degC air temperature.
The scenery round here is stunning, so the drive up was filled with "wow!" moments coming round corners. I drove along an A road, turning off just before Lochinver onto a single track road where the frequency of those "wow!" moments was cranked up further; hills, lochs, cliffs, white sandy beaches - all in there.
I parked up near the lighthouse and had a wee blether with the lady opening up the coffee shack to get an idea of conditions. I was advised that the ground was crisp underfoot and way drier than normal for this time of year, so I opted to leave the Mudclaws behind, wear the Bear Grips for the first section and the Roclites for the rest, the selection turned out to be sound.
While the temperature had risen during my drive, it was still cold starting off, which was straight up a wee incline, so it took a while to get wqrmth into my calves. The ground felt like a top layer was frozen but that it wasn't too deep, so it had a slightly springy feel to to it underfoot, which was comfortable enough in the BGs, except when my landed on some shurned up mud that had frozen solid...
Running in the sun, a couple of layers had to come back off sooner than I expected, and it finally felt like spring has arrived.
When the Old Man first appeared, I edged out along a short knife edge spur to sit, exposed on a little peak, soaking in the scenery, before heading on round to get a closer look at the stack.
As I was the first visitor in the car park, all the way out on the run it was like I had the entire headland to myself; just me, the sea, the sky amd the ground I was running on. I wove along the paths, up grassy slopes, swooping down hills, scampering rouns the rocks and opened up my stride as the ground levelled out towards the top of the stack. This is running at its finest to me.
I changes into my Roclites at this point, as I had enough wee niggles to remind myself that I'm still working on strengthening my feet. The extra support given by the shoes meant I did run much more confidently the rest of the way, but I do hope to be doing runs like todays run entirely in the BGs in the not to distant future.
After an appropriate amount of time gawping at the Old Man (fnarr) I carried towards the tip of the headland to get other views of the stack. By now I had an unobstructed view across to the snow topped Sutherland hills. More gawping at the Old Man and then on out to the very tip of the land, where it felt kinda like I was standing at the edge of the world.
The sun had melted any ground frost so the running was now onto ground that had more gice and was a pleasure to run on. Up through the heather I ran, up to a trig poing indicating the highest point out there for a gobsmackingly beautiful 360 panorama. Words can't do it justice.
From there I dropped down off the path to run through some boggy heather as it looked much more fun than sticking to the path (it was), leading me down to a beautiful wee pool before I joined the road from the radio mast back down to the car park.
Just stunning. If you are ever up that way, make sure you have your trail shoes....