My wife Lynne and I are both keen amateur photographers and focus mainly on outdoor subjects. I enjoy the challenge of landscapes and Lynne excels in taking close up macro photos of flowers and fungi. But we both love wildlife, and that’s the main reason we love Ardtornish so much and keep coming back year after year.
We live in a beautiful part of north Dorset, about as far away from Scotland as we could possibly be. But we head for the Highlands and Islands as often as work and the 10+ hour drive will allow. We try to make 3 visits a year, to enjoy the changing seasons, and the differing photo opportunities they present.
Our aim has always been to experience as much of Scotland’s beauty as possible, but we find ourselves being drawn back to Ardtornish every year, particularly in late summer and autumn. The fact is the estate and surrounding area have absolutely everything we want to make our holidays special and give us some amazing photo opportunities.
Lynne is very meticulous in her planning, so reads and digests numerous guidebooks and any other reference material she can find before we go anywhere. And we then try to summarise that knowledge for future use, as annotations on our ordnance survey maps. We follow relevant social media pages to glean as much local information as possible about our holiday destination, and the photographic opportunities it is likely to present. I hope to write another blog about how we plan our trips to maximise the photo opportunities.
Doing all this helps build the excitement and anticipation long before the holiday even starts. We spend countless evenings speculating about what we should ‘definitely’ see, and discussing a more optimistic wish list of things we might hope to see. There are times when our imaginations do run a little bit wild and we dream of finding real rarities – like wildcats and whales, but we try to be a bit more realistic about our expectations.
For us both, Ardtornish is the perfect autumn holiday. The cottages are cozy and well-appointed and the staff on the estate are all so friendly and helpful. The gardens are amazing in their autumn colours, and the wide range of grassland and woodland fungi can keep Lynne busy for days. The scenery is special, and although the weather can be challenging at times, what’s not to love about autumn colours under a brooding, threatening sky. And a drive further afield, or a ferry across to Mull will open up even more possibilities.
But for us, it’s the great opportunities to photograph some special wildlife that draw us back year after year.
Our normal Ardtornish ‘hit list’ would include (in no particular order or preference): sea eagle, golden eagle, hen harrier, merlin, migrating geese and swans, divers, rutting red deer, otters, red squirrels and pine marten. And we’ve seen them all, without even leaving the estate.
Our “wish” list, on the other hand would include things like family groups of otters fishing and playing, red deer stags fighting and locking antlers, whales and dolphins, black grouse, short eared owls and wildcat. And over the years, we’ve discovered that with a lot of hard work and a bit of luck, the things we dream of seeing are all actually there, somewhere, just waiting for us to find them.
We do spend a lot of time in pursuit of our photos, in between fishing for and occasionally landing a salmon from the river – (another great reason for an autumn visit to Ardtorninsh). We are up before dawn most mornings, so we can be on the lookout for activity as the sun rises, and we do the same again at sunset.
Then, when most normal people might think about enjoying a leisurely dinner and a glass of something in front of the fire, we’re watching the garden of our cottage intently, hoping to catch the estate’s resident pine marten going about their nocturnal business. I hope to write another article that gives a bit of an insight into how we go about winning their trust, so that we can snap them without disturbing them.
As I’m writing this it’s the middle of January and we’ve just suffered the effects of Storm Isha. We’re already dreaming of late September at Ardtonish, and hopefully some less extreme weather. Can’t wait!
