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From my camp site location about 1 mile outside PORTREE on the Isle of Skye the journey to NEIST POINT Lighthouse finishes with a drive of about 10 miles of single track road and at it's end is the footpath to the Lighthouse, the major problem for me , when I arrived there to park up , is that there is only room for about 5 cars and two mini 11 seater coaches to park clear of the single track road and then any other vehicle has to park with 2 wheels just on the road and 2 wheels on the grass verge, while o-k if you are in a saloon or 4x4 car but not if you have a 19 feet/6.1metre long motor home - RV weighing about 3 tons / 3000Kg. I was able to turn my vehicle around and look for a hard surface on the grass verge to park, so I looked , found a good area and drove on to it, o-k so far , but then the rear wheel on the grass just started to sink into the ground nearly up to the axle, because it had just sunk in, there was no slope in or out of the hole , which is suprising when 99.9999999% of the Isle of Skye is stone with 5mm. soil on top. The thing is not to panic just because there will be about 1000 Lighthouse Hunters waiting on 20m to work Neist Lighthouse, I was able to scrape about a bucket of gravel off the the road and put it close to the wheel to give me some traction , that did'nt work, I then looked at the car's that were parked nearby but they were all saloons, not a 4x4 in sight, like policemen they are never around when you need one. hi . So off to find one of the mini coach driver's , I found one a very nice young lady and yes she would give it go, when she brought her vehicle by mine, she said not possible because of the angle my motor home was leaning and as the coach had a very flimsy rear bumber it could have broken it, OH, I forgot to tell you that my RV, it was leaning to the right and because of that I could only just get in and out of the driving seat as the door was touching the ground also the ground sloped away for about 400 feet/133metres and then a drop of ? feet/metres ( I did'nt go and look) to the rocks below. Then the young lady said "don't worry I have a party of 22 people who will get you out of the situation your in" and off she went, about 15 minutes later I see this group of young guys, BIG young guys heading my way, I had hardly switched the engine on, when my motor home was suddenly upright again and back on solid ground, when I got out to thank my rescuers and talk to them , I found them to be many different nationality's , those that I remember were from Indonesia, Canada, India, U.S.A. Australia,France, Germany. So a truly INTERNATIONAL RESCUE and as I have said to many none Amateur Radio people " it,s not all fun being HAM operator " as you all know when trying to put up that beam or wire antenna on your own. At 65 years old , I'm getting to old for this, I'll give it another 10 years then I'm packing it in. hi. the traveling that is. At least I was able to make 61 people happy with a contact with NEIST POINT Lighthouse.

The position of the Lighthouse gives anyone visiting, views across to the Outer Hebridean islands of Barra, South & North Uist,Harris and Inner Hebridean islands Harris,Rhum,Coll and Tiree. The sunsets can be fantastic as the sun sinks behind the islands. the sea fishing off the rocks is good and you may see as I did 6 years ago my first whale not a 100 yards off shore.

In the 10 days that I transmitted on the Isle of Skye I made over 1100 contacts and I was very pleased to see that many of the people I spoke with, said it was there first time Island hunting, that they were going for the IOTA 2000 Award. I wish them the best of good luck with there Island and Lighthouse Hunting.

My last visit to Neist Point was on 23rd july 00 was very good about 80 contacts were made and I was able to get a very solid parking position. There is a lighthouse on the Isle of Raasey close to the Isle of Skye and so next year 2001 I hope to operate from it.so again a bargain contact two for the price of one, a lighthouse and IOTA.

I made 2 visits to Neist Point L/H in April 2001 but because of a health problem I had to return home.

I also made visits to the lighthouse 2002,2004 and the latest 11th August 2005

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