Saturday – My usual morning to myself although Ady was home earlier than usual so it was slightly curtailed. I spent the time baking instead of crocheting, cheese scones, peanut butter cookies, cherry and almond cupcakes with marzipan. All very nice 🙂
After lunch Ady and I walked down to get some stuff he had left in the car and I had a go with the new pallet dismantler tool, it’s pretty good. While we were playing with that a couple walked past having been to the shop and stopped to chat for a while. I had had an email exchange with her earlier in the year as they are Friends of Rum and I do the newsletter for that a couple of times a year. They had also seen the Fogle show so we talked about that a bit.
Later I planted out the strawberries which had arrived into some compost. I have a large bed earmarked for them but it needs weeding and filling with soil so for now they are in there waiting to be moved.
Ady cooked a curry, we watched Lost.
Sunday – Big Lunch. We went to the pier to collect petrol and then to the hall to set up. There had been some miscommunication about the time so we didn’t actually get going until about 1pm but we had a really good turn out and lots of nice food. I chatted lots to Lesley, Ady and I gave an interview to Sara who came before and is doing a Phd on healthcare in rural highlands and islands, this was her second visit and she’ll be back for a third probably next year.
Monday – Scarlett and I packed ourselves up in the morning and we had a visit from Ivan From France, a WWOOFer from last year who was over for a few days bringing his girlfriend over. Good to see him again. They had a cup of tea with us and then we headed off to the pier. A smooth but busy crossing on the boat which was packed and then a drive to Fort William. A quick Lidl and Morrisons shop, dinner in McDonalds and then off to the hotel which was about 20 minutes outside of FW. We went from 4g phone signal to nothing at all and the hotel only had wifi with purchases down in the bar so that was us cut off from the world again! I crocheted, had a shower and we watched crap TV before a relatively early night.
Tuesday – I’d not slept terribly well and woken at least twice sufficiently to check the time – 330am and 530am. Which meant that when I woke again to realise either the alarm on my phone had not gone off or we had both slept through it and it was now 849am it was quite a shock! I woke Scarlett and we were incredibly efficient getting everything packed up and us from bed to car down stairs in 8 minutes! Scarlett’s appointment was at 9am – the whole reason we had come off Rum and spent all the money on travel and accommodation. While I drove Scarlett kept checking for phone signal and as soon as she had it she rang the dentist to explain we were running a little late. They were classic highland chilled about it and we were there by about 915am. Â Scarlett had the palate expander tightened and that was us for another 8 weeks.
We did the charity shops of FW, Superdrug, WHSmiths, the card shop, the gift shop, I posted the midges I’d bought off with me and a Fathers Day card for my Dad, we went to Morrisons, got fuel, got cakes and cookies from Lidl, had lunch in McDonalds, went to Poundstretcher and some other only really accessible by car charity shops just outside FW. Then we drove to Mallaig and dropped off all the shopping at the container for freight for Rum to come across the next day, had an ice cream and then drove back to Alison & Leon’s.
Scarlett had a lovely evening with the girls there, I had some chats with A & L but they were working as Leon was off the following day down south to lead a bushcraft course so was busy doing prep while Alison was doing paperwork so I mostly sat enjoying the view and reading all the links to articles I never normally follow on people’s facebook posts. Interesting stuff…
Scarlett and I slept in the double bed in the office and it was so warm it was another unsettled nights sleep. The alarm did go off this time and Scarlett had another half n hour or so with Iona before she went off to school. They were mostly watching cooking clips on youtube I think. We left then to drive back to Mallaig for the ferry. Wednesday is coach trip day and I was genuinely concerned we might not get on the boat as I suspected it was close to capacity numbers of 190 passengers. We popped in the Co op for dairy stuff and got on board. We sat downstairs in the cafe deck which I prefer. It was a bit rocky but it’s a short straight to Rum trip so not too bad.
Excellent to be home and the river is still so low we were able to transfer everything from the Jeep to the Rangerover and drive all the way up the croft which made for very easy unloading. All unpacked and put away. We had lunch and then Ady and I walked back down to the village to check for post.
I rang Julie who has told Chris and was needing some support.
I made dinner – tacos and tortillas and nachos. We watched Lost.
Today – Ady worked this morning while I faffed with various online things and did some wine glass painting – it was Fliss’ birthday the week before last which I missed as I had offered to take her to Canna for lunch then it fell through, Ali’s birthday yesterday although she is still over at Kilmory catching deer calves and it will be Lesley’s birthday in a couple of weeks so I had bought a pack of wine glasses to decorate as gifts for them all to go with a bottle of fizz each. A few designs later I am really pleased with what I have done with them all.
We packed the rucksack with lunch and walked down to meet Ady but Scarlett was edgy about the boat being bumpy as she has already been on board a choppy boat twice this week. We said she could decide and drove to the pier to check out the white horses. She decided she would rather potentially regret not seeing something when visibility was poor anyway than regret going on the boat and being seasick so we came home again. We unpacked the picnic lunch and ate it then Scarlett and I made some bath bombs. I packaged them and took some down to the shop. Ady scythed the fruit cage and some of the ground around it, I cut around some of the raised beds in the walled garden with hand shears – it looks a bit less wild and forgotten but still quite untamed.
This evening some more glass painting, more Lost..