Rest and Be Thankful

Thought you might like to see a few photos of a winter trip up to the Rest and Be Thankful, to take some photos and blow away the cobwebs.

(This was a few hours before a landslide blocked the road!)

This is looking down the Rest and Be Thankful.  The bit where the road usually blocks is the top right.  The Old Military Road is the one running through the centre of the photo.

 

Hell's Glen.

Glen Lochy.

Here's some links to photos that I took at the Rest and Be Thankful in previous years - 

2014  and 2015

Rest and Be Thankful

I've been out and about over the Christmas break, taking photographs.

Here are a few from the Rest and Be Thankful, on the way to a favourite spot of mine for painting, Hell's Glen.  It's on the way from Arrochar to Inverary.  Originally an old cattle droving road, it was later a military road built around the time of the '45.  Nowadays, the winding old military road makes a good classic car hill climb (I speak from experience).

The weather was pouring with rain one minute, then sleet, and then sudden bright sunshine and blue skies with fast-moving white cloud - perfect!

I had a helper.

It's a darling little lady chaffinch, who must have been very hungry, as she flew down to the car window without fear.  All I had to give her were a few crumbs.  Fortunately,  my car is always full of crumbs.

She was very grateful.

New Year Photographs

Despite the biblically bad weather over New Year, I still managed to get out and about to take photographs.  There are still some nice autumn colours around Loch Lomond and the Arrochar Alps.

I took a trip round towards Inveraray, where the water was pouring in spate down the hills.  Here's a view at one of my favourite sites, Hell's Glen, which is the B839 and runs from the Rest and be Thankful over to Loch Fyne.

As I do quite a few paintings of the area, I'm often asked why the name 'Hell's Glen'?  

(The slope on the far left of the photo above is the right hand slope of the mountain in the painting below.)

Pink and Yellow Flowers, Hell's Glen (Oil, 10 x 10)

According to Wikipedia - so it must be true - it's a glen which runs between the mountains Cruach nam Mult and Stob an Eas.  The name is from Gaelic Glen Iarainn, which apparently means the Iron Glen, but sounds like the nearby Glen Ifhrinn, which means the Glen of Hell.

Which doesn't really explain anything at all...

However, you can see exactly what it's like from a viewpoint which is strangely familiar to me - bouncing around in a mini, in this little video HERE. 

(I should add, it's not my mini, it's someone else's, but mine's just as teeth-jangling and much noisier.)