Thursday – another day of definite improvement in the Ankle of Doom but still felt I should be sensible and stay mostly off it. So in the morning while Ady headed down to the village to meet the boat and do a few other bits and pieces down there I finished off the Rum newsletter and got that emailed around everyone. The snow was pretty amazing so Scarlett spent some time outside in the afternoon building a snowman and generally getting very cold while Davies and I enjoyed it from inside.
Ady made fish pie for dinner which was very lovely but made the caravan stink of fish and it still does today. Drove the cat mad!
Friday – More improvement on the ankle so I decided to venture out. It was such a beautiful day, blue skies and white snow and sunshine. Just glorious, but very cold. We had some car shenanigans to carry out, all a bit chicken, fox, grain.. We always take the black Chevy to the pier the day before we go off, mostly to ensure it starts and is in the right place fully intact ready to load on the ferry and then go down with sufficient time to walk if needs be in a different car to meet the ferry. So today we took the Chevy (which started straight away), cleaned the seatbelts off which have grown mold – there must be sufficient damp in there for it to grow although it wipes straight off. As I recall when we last had it open to unload shopping it was raining so some water would have gone in and landed on the seats which was probably enough. We’ll leave a condensation / moisture trap in there when we come home to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Ady followed me with the Jeep to the pier, stopping to drop off some laundry at the castle on the way. At the pier we inflated the front tyres which were both a bit low and then parked it up ready for tomorrow.
Then back to the turn off, via collecting a battery Ady had charged to put the battery in the Rangerover, inflated the flat tyre on that and then I followed Ady driving that to the pier in the Jeep as Big Dave is coming over while we’re away and wanted it at the pier for him to use. Then home. Ady had shouted at Bonnie who had tried to jump in the Rangerover and she had skulked away back to the croft so we expected her to be here when we got back but she wasn’t so after calling her for a while we decided she must have headed down after us so Ady went to find her. Sure enough she had gone to the shop where Ali had found her and taken her back to their house while they had lunch planning to bring her back up to us. So Ady returned with Bonnie, Ali and Eve.
Which meant my afternoon was not spent organising myself and the kids but sitting chatting to Ali instead. Never mind.
We’re all packed up now, various people know what they are doing with various creatures, Kira the cat has mastered going in and out of the cat flap by herself, the ferry is running and facebook wisdom from people who know suggests our usual route south via Loch Lomond is still the best path so we will battle through the weather and hope to hit England at not too late an hour tomorrow evening.