Last week when at the allotment, we were aware of a number of sirens and blue flashing lights on the main road, not far from the plot. It’s a busy stretch of road so that is quite a regular thing but it was the number of sirens which made me think ‘that’s a bad one’. It was.

I found out on the radio a few days later, that had been a fatal collision and not far from us.

Fast forward to today and Dearest Son and I had to go travelling over to the Black Isle which is North of Inverness. Beautiful countryside, mountains in the distance, animals in the fields – the lot:

I hadn’t been to our destination before and as I don’t have a smart phone or sat nav I wrote down instructions of how to get there and had studied a map – yes, a map (remember them?) – the night before.

However, as we were getting to within a few miles of our final stop, there was a car coming towards us with lights flashing and the driver doing the signal to everyone to SLOW DOWN. We couldn’t see anything immediately but were on the look-out. It didn’t take long to see why we had all been told to slow down.

There was a slipway to our left which all of us were being diverted onto and oncoming traffic was being pushed in the same direction as their path was also blocked. This was clearly a busy junction but today it was chaos.

Cars at the side of the road, one car smack bang in the middle of the road and a lorry here and there too. It looked like at least 2 cars had banged into each other at the junction and I thought the lorries were being used as a barrier more than being part of the accident.

So off we went in the same diverted direction as everyone else and found our way easily enough. When we got out of the car however, we could hear that familiar high pitch of yet more sirens heading in the direction of the collision.

On our way home, I was thinking about how busy the road was when, sure enough, another ambulance came hurtling towards us heading goodness knows where. More sirens and lights.

It really got me thinking though about just how safe are the roads around here? When you start heading North from the central belt of Scotland, there is only one main road to take you there. You can add many miles going the scenic route but those roads require a certain amount of driving skill and are not for the faint of heart. People forget they aren’t on dual carriageway anymore and take the one lane roads way too fast so end up missing the passing places (there are videos on Youtube showing this if you have the stomach for it).

Even going East from Inverness, there is only one main road which is notorious for accidents at specific points. They keep talking about dualling it but it is only ever talk.

Do we all have to be in such a rush I wonder? Are peoples’ heads so full of ‘stuff’ that they can no longer concentrate on the driving? Or is it just plain old bad luck and I’ve just happened to be in places recently where bad things had happened?

I am very grateful however, that for all these incidents, we were just minutes too late. Had I been more organised, had Dearest Son been in more of a rush, we could easily have left the house 10 minutes earlier and that would definitely have placed us at the wrong place at the very wrong time.