A postcard image this month, after much humming, hawing and examining of the relative merits of a third Kennet & Avon picture against going to the Scottish Highlands. Eventually the Highlands won out.

The village of Plockton is notable for a great many things. It appeared in the television shows Hamish Macbeth and The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries. It has a splendid array of palm trees (unusual for anywhere North of the Great Glen) benefitting from it being at the north end of the warm air of the Gulf Stream, east-facing while on the West Coast of Scotland and sheltered by the mountains of the Isle of Skye. It looks over at Duncraig Castle (visible in the left centre of the picture) which was the centre of a reality TV show (of sorts) following the excitements of a family attempting to restore it while simultaneously falling out left, right and centre. It is also the largest intermediate centre of population on the railway from Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh; Kyle is a trifle larger and better equipped regarding hotels. A daily bus links Kyle and Plockton to compete with the four daily trains to and from Inverness.

The photo looks across the bay from Plockton at Duncraig and its backing mountains. The railway runs along a little above the tide mark across the water, this being one of the sections of Britain's railway where the track runs along the seashore - although strictly speaking the sea is in fact Loch Carron. Rather than the usual problem of water rising up and washing the track away, this seashore railway's main concern is landslips caused by the mountains above the line being destabilised by the construction of a road just above the railway in the 1970s. (The brief for the road was to justify closing the railway and it does - for a few weeks at a time every few years.)