The wind funnel

It's time to abandon the Best Campsite in the World. So I said to myself on the way back to my little rescue boat in the middle of a gigantic wind maelstrom, and slapped myself immediately. Never! Never will I abandon. At least let's turn the tent around to face away from the loch. But then, I heard myself say, I don't have the view in the morning if and when it calms down a little. And it will calm down. (It didn't.) When I lie awake in the night, listening to the waves three meters in front of the tent, the streams left and right, and the howling gusts which push the tent down onto my face, it doesn't quite feel anymore like I'm on this planet.

The Best Campsite in the World has a wind problem. The glen funnels every bit of airflow from the north or south into a gigantic gale. If the wind comes from the north, it has two miles to accelerate following Bernouilli's laws, before it reaches the south shore and the little beach. If it turns just a little to the east, the winds take up speed on the plateau above before they drop down to the glen, in clumps of turbulence that shake my confidence in the tentpoles. Leave the glen though, just by a little bit, set up shop just outside the wind funnel, and you have a lovely quiet night. You sort of understand why there are fundaments of old houses just outside the glen, in both directions, but not in it. No fools, these people.