Our static has a skirt. Or maybe now we’re in Scotland it could be a kilt! 😆
I took Davies and Scarlett down to meet Mike this morning for some more bird ringing. I dropped them off and nipped to the castle to stick a wash on, then back to them. They had already caught a male and female goldcrest and were ringing them when I arrived. I was just in time to see them both and be shown the differences between sexes. They are tiny birds (smallest in UK) and very pretty. I stayed for a cup of tea and chat with Mike and Fliss and Joss walked past so we chatted to them too. Then I left the kids for one last look at the nets before they went home and I went to meet the ferry. The usual Calmac ferry, Loch Nevis is off for it’s annual service so we have the Loch Brushter at the moment, a smaller, slower, noisier boat that mucks up the timetable completely. It is also being run alongside the Orion, a small whalewatching superfast boat that sometimes does passenger runs too so the whole timetable is totally askew. The castle had rung Calmac and been told normal two ferries at 15 minutes earlier would be in so I went with that and arrived to meet the first one to realise it was not even in sight. I have the skippers number so I rang him and got his ETA instead which was another 45 minutes. Not long enough to go home really so I sat in Daves’ van with my fluorescent vest on and waited. Various people came to chat to me, I saw the boat in, chatted to the staff and then headed off.
Next on my list was taking sausages out of Fliss’ freezer for dinner tonight so I popped round there and ended up staying for three cups of tea and nearly two hours of chatting. I do like Fliss’ company, she is very similar natured to me. I left there and collected my washing which James at the castle had very kindly tumble dried for me :). Then finally up to the croft. I carried the whole bag of clean laundry (about 3 normal machine loads) and Scarlett’s new wellies and my new gilet which had arrived in the post along with two packs of sausages and two 1.5kg bags of bread flour. That hill gets no kinder!
As I walked up the hill so the rain started and had driven Ady and Sandy indoors. They had all but finished though – will get some pictures tomorrow. It looks fantastic 🙂 The whole static has a skirt round it, hatches have been put in for access to the genny and water and we have a verandah and steps outside to sit on. Sandy has built a bench to sit on and store wellies underneath out of the rain too. I love it :).
I heated up some soup and we grown ups had some food, the kids had already sorted out their own lunch. Then Sandy headed for home and Ady and I went down to meet the second boat. We arrived at about the same time as the boat did so dashed about getting the ropes ready, waved everyone off that we knew was leaving but then instead of being able to let the boat go early as we’d hoped there was confusion about whether two day trippers had got back on or not. We assume they had in the end because no one seems to have heard from them but there was some toing and froing with the boat.
We then were hailed by Sean on our way past the castle to say while Richard (big SNH boss) was not around would we like him to bring the big table Billy had left for us up to the croft on the forks on the tractor. We’d been agonising over how to get it up – it’s really heavy, Ady and I can barely drag it between us and really big, it wouldn’t fit in the car so we jumped at that :). We followed him up and he managed to get it about half way up the croft so we now have a fairly random table in the middle of the track but we can sort that out tomorrow. Back to the car where we found Martyn trying to get in because Bonnie had managed to turn on the hazard lights AND lock herself in 😆 We sorted that and then went to the castle to collect the last of the wood, called into the shop for a couple of bits for dinner tomorrow and then finally came home.
I washed up – there was mountains of it, dinner last night, breakfast and lunch today, made bread, had a shower and cooked dinner. Ady tidied up outside a bit and we’re all looking forward to a day off from everything tomorrow. We have Fliss and Sandy coming up for dinner and I’m looking forward to making something nice and having a grown up evening with friends after a day of no running around or being up at a certain time.
Table?