So it was all planned; interview on Rum followed by a day exploring, followed by a weekend at Neil & Sue’s on Eigg catching up and then a 10 day stint of WWOOFing for them before heading back to the mainland next Wednesday for the crofting course. Nice and tidy.
Except as we stepped on the ferry with all of the wellwishes waving us goodbye from the pier on Rum the captain told us ‘you’ll be pleased to know we’re just heading straight back to Mallaig’ – it was pretty choppy. We said actually no, we were hoping to go to Eigg at which he shrugged and repeated that they were just going to Mallaig so what did we want to do. We glanced back, looked at each other and I made the decision to get on the boat. Staying on Rum wasn’t really an option – we didn’t have enough money for food or the hostel (even at the very discounted rate the manager had charged us) and if the ferries are about to be disrupted the last thing we wanted to risk waas getting trapped on the island and missing the crofting course.
As we pulled away and headed up to the top deck Scarlett asked me ‘so what’s the plan then Mummy?’ to which I replied I didn’t have one yet. She looked shocked and said ‘what do you mean you don’t have a plan? You always have a plan!’ which I think most people know is not at all true, I am just good at winging it with a sense of authority suggesting a plan! I said that I would have a plan by the time we got off the boat!
The kids had chips while I sat grabbing the odd bits of phone signal to send a couple of text messages and take a phone call from Lynda which secured us a bed for Saturday night, albeit one 370 miles away back down in England! After lots of discussion we decided Eigg was going to not happen – we’d have had to find somewhere to stay until at least Monday when the next ferry was and then worried about not getting off again next week – petrol back down to a free bed at a friends was definitely the cheaper option, with further plans to be made as we got our heads around the fact all of my careful and cunning planning had been thrown into disarray.
We stopped briefly in Fort William for some biscuits, petrol and a wee and then drove straight from there to Lynda & Stuart’s arriving at 930pm. A Very Long day. We went through the mountains which were looking dangerously as though the snow gates may close as it got heavier and heavier with snow and despite gritters going up and down the paths the road was very slippy and quite scary. We did pull over for a very brief photos and snowballs break 🙂
Once we hit Loch Lomond the snow had stopped and we didn’t see any more for the rest of the drive. It was boring and long but we didn’t really hit any traffic and despite the chaos of having our plans ruined we were all on quite a high still from the whole ‘we got a croft!’ news 🙂
Lynda and Stuart were wonderful as ever, feeding us, giving us wine and beer and being so supportive and enthusiastic about our news. The kids made a lego animation on Davies’ 3DS and then went to bed around midnight, Ady and Stuart all but followed them up but Lynda and I were up til 2am chatting. I do love her and I told her so with a big hug 🙂
This morning we finalised next plans and the Wonderful FabBabs & co are putting us up for the week – we did consider driving back to Sussex but Babs is insisting it is fine for us to stay here and it’s certainly lovely to be with friends rather than camping out in our house so we’re taking them up on it!
We came to Babs via Kirsty & James – for cups of tea, congratulatory cuddles, safe handing back of The Humph (Scarlett’s silver lining of not going to Eigg 🙂 ). Talking, looking at croft photos, a gorgeous curry and plenty of playing for the kids before everyone else wussed out and went to bed leaving me to blog and ponder further on all things Rum related.