Ullapool

So there's, it, it's, it doesn't take, you know, the, the, the, the journey, uh, in comparison to a, a journey that a, a lot, journeys that Americans make, it's fairly short.

It'd be a four-hour drive to the ferry port to Ullapool, then we take a two and a half, half hour ferry to Stornoway, and then there would be a, a, a, an hour and a half drive to the studio on Great Bernera where there would be the five of us in the band, the two engineers, and a lot of sheep.

And that was kind of it.

It was really, really remote, but it's, it's a beautiful landscape and sort of magical sort of landscape.

I went to, I think the 3rd of January.

I was up in Ullapool for three days, and, uh, uh, there was quite a lot of snow there.

Yeah.

It was wet snow, but-

...

Ullapool to Stornoway, I think it was.

Was it Ullapool? Yeah, Ullapool-

Yeah, it was Ullapool

... to Stornoway was the first ferry.

Get off the ferry.

Is that where you went out and then had to try and climb over a fence to get back?

Oh, no.

Uh, w- we're coming from, from Torridon, and we're heading over the mountains to Dundonald, which is on Loch Broom Beck, uh, Little Loch Broom.

And we're, we're actually heading over then to Loch Broom, Ullapool.

We weren't going to Ullapool, but we're heading that way.

And we'd come into the mountains.

I'd, I'd spoken with a stalker about the best way to, to get... 'Cause I was looking, looking to go through a pass, which was, uh, Bealach na Creiche, the Pass of the Cross.

The album's called Hello Harp, and these are the Deerie Moor Jigs.

Deerie Moor, that's a road, isn't it? I think on the way to Ullapool, near that fantastic mountain called An Teallach.

[harp music] That was Rachel Hare from her new album, Hello Harp, with the Deerie Moor Jigs.

Another new album is Martin Simpson's Some Kind of Jubilee that came out just a few weeks ago now.

[instrumental music]

So that was a new track from Shooglenifty, remembering their old pal Angus.

Rachel Hare earlier took us to the Deery Moor on the way to Ullapool.

We're going further north and west now to Assynt, the band called Assynt, from an album from 2023 called Where From Here, and this is Rescues.

We had to drive, well, you know, in, in, you know, relative terms through Scotland's a fairly small country compared to the United States or whatever.

But, um, we had to drive north to Ullapool and then take a ferry across to the, the main island.

Then we had to drive, uh, for another couple of hours to a place called Great Bernera, where, um, the studio was located.

And it's quite remote.

No, that's terrible.

Uh, Ullapool Hearts.

Cheapest bacon roll in Ullapool is £3.90.

Worst part of the price is it's usually two slices of the wholesale food supplier's cheap watery big catering slabs of bacon.

That's served in a frozen floured burger bap style roll.

Yeah.

It's, it is, it's good in the morning.

Um, the next cheapest in Ullapool, if you're interested, is £4.10 for a bacon roll with a bonus of a morning roll defrosted that morning.