Endurance cyclist Emily Chappell on her love for Mellon Udrigle, Wester Ross Where is it? A tiny clachan called Mellon Udrigle, hidden away along a dead-end road on the Rubha Mor peninsula in Wester Ross. There’s not much there - just a scattering of crofters’ cottages, a beautiful golden beach and millions of tiny seashells. Why do you go there? To listen to the waves, look up at the deeply familiar mountain skyline and feel like I’m a long way from the rest of the world .
How often do you go? Not as often as I’d like. How did you discover it? My mother’s family spent their summer holidays there in the 1950s, my siblings and I were taken there in the 1980s and I’ve been back a few times as an adult, mostly just on day trips. For a few years there didn’t seem to be a property you could rent, but now there is again, so I’m hoping to go for a proper holiday in the next year.
What’s your favourite memory? I was a very free-range child and would spend hours on my own, exploring every inch of the beaches, headlands, rockpools and trails (don’t tell my mother about my rock-climbing adventures on the cliffs.) I remember really enjoying a treasure hunt my father set for us, with clues laid all over the territory we had got to know. There was one hidden in a cairn out on the headland and another buried on the beach.
Emily Chappell (Image: free) It must have taken us hours to find them all and 10-year-old me would have been very excited about whatever small edible t.