This morning dawned just as I have been waiting for Scotland in the autumn to be. Beautiful colours but cold, wet, windy and on the wild side. Much though the amazing sunshine and heat has been lovely for all the outdoors walking type stuff we’ve done I do want to experience Scotland at it’s worst weather wise so we can make informed decisions about moving this far north so I’m sort of glad it has started to turn. See, you knew I’d find a positive in there didn’t you!? 😉
The wind and rain was really lashing the van though – glad we weren’t parked on the side of a mountain like we have been a few times!
Ady and I both had showers, the kids refused on the basis that if they can happily go a week without they certainly don’t need another one less than 24 hours after the last one! We got the last bits of charge in everything before unplugging the hook up and heading off on our way. Plans for this week are very loose, basically we want to be in Inverness next Monday so have a week to kill in this area. I’m not at all sure what there is in the way of actual things to do but we feel we know this area a bit having spent time here on holiday twice so can happily hang out around Loch Ness or in the Rosemarkie area just watching the world go by and drinking tea in the van.
But first we needed petrol and some food for the next couple of days. So we drove to Fort Augustus for both and to tick off Calendonian Canal Visitor Centre. We had lunch in the carpark having topped up supplies of cheese and fruit. Ady had his second ‘it all goes wrong without Nic’s supervision at the petrol station’ incident which ended up with a public flashing of his bum! 😆 On Saturday we stopped for petrol and Ady went over a bump on the way out which knocked over one of the water containers which spilt all over the floor in Willow, wasting precious water and making a mess. Today was even better though – I had gone into the shop and he appeared soaking and stinking having splashed petrol back from the nozzle over himself and his clean jeans he was so proud of having handwashed and gotten dry. I sent him off to change out of them quick and when I arrived back at the van and opened the door I found him naked from the waist down, bent over sniffing his pants!!!! A coach full of people parked up opposite appeared to have also seen! 😆 😆 He was smelling his pants to see if the petrol smell had gone though the jeans on to them and hadn’t expected me to open the door. It was very funny and I intend to keep reminding him of the incident for many years to come. Davies says I am a mean wife 😉 I think this might be a good way to put him off selecting an unsuitable bride in the future.
After lunch we walked to the locks on the canal and spent time in the visitor centre. The waterway is a Telford design, as is Menai Bridge and Llangollen canal, both of which we have visited this year and looked at so that was good to show Davies and Scarlett another feat of his engineering career. There were quite a lot of people milling about taking photos and although it kept raining we walked around for a while and took some pictures.
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The kids then spotted a little bird sitting down and went up to it. It was quite fiesty but looked scared. Scarlett was worried about it and I thought it looked quite young but we left it to see if it sorted itself out and carried on walking. Scarlett remained fretful so I said we could go back to check and found two men from the Waterways with a cardboard box collecting it. Scarlett talked to them (having watched their rather comical attempt to get it in the box, she could have done it far better!) and they said the RSPB were on their way to collect it and they were fairly sure it was a guillemot that had been blown off course by the very high winds earlier today. I remember from childhood hearing about seabirds getting blown off course and getting exhausted and needing to rest.
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After that we decided it was time to start finding somewhere to sleep tonight and ended up going further than we anticipated – we’re trying to get to Glen Affric, and are in a woodland I have now forgotten the name of.
Ady and I got dinner on (steak pie with shortcrust pie and suet pastry top to please everyone’s pastry tastes, served with potatoes (from a tin, roasted), sweetcorn and gravy) while the kids headed off into the woods with penknives to do some whittling.
After dinner we finished the Morpurgo book we started last night – we’re running low on kids books, need to get some on the kindle for them really and had hot chocolate before bed.