Early June of this year I was able to visit my son in northern Wales and we drove up north and around for three weeks. Lots of time on the Isle of Skye. We got as far north as Loch Ewe, staying in Poolewe for a couple of nights at the inn...could have stayed a couple more. Took the Rolleicord...did okay. A different landscape and history that would take me much more time to get a visual handle on.
My father was in the US Merchant Marine Academy during WW2. He was lucky, his first ship as a cadet turned south from Iceland and headed to North Africa, then to the Pacific. He was then on a converted fast luxury liner from San Francisco to New Zealand with a cargo of Marines. He was lucky because many of his classmates were on ships to Loch Ewe and on their way to Russia with many losses. My dad's graduating class from the Academy lost the highest number of cadets at sea than any other class. In 1944 he was back in New York for graduation, got married, and headed back to the Pacific as a Navy engineering officer down below.
So if my dad had been to Loch Ewe, I might not have been born and not seen Loch Ewe. But if he had, perhaps my mother would have been a Scottish beauty instead of a New Yorker. There were rumours of a girlfriend in Wellington...