Wednesday was a crazy long day. We were all up early and ready to go well on time. Except at the last minute I realised Scarlett was wearing a pair of trousers that had tea stains on them on the front and mud stains on the back. All her decent trousers were already packed, the only other pair she dug out were too small. So I quickly stitched up a hole in a clean but ripped pair just as we were supposed to be leaving the caravan. Which meant it was me who left last and locked the door behind me. We never used to lock the door and still don’t if we’re on the island but when we are away we tend to these days. The theft of stuff from the wee shop on Canna at the weekend has made everyone a bit cautious, not that I expect for one second that anyone would bother walking two miles inland to rob our caravan, but a quick lock of the door means we won’t even fret about it being a possibility. We leave the keys in a boot inside the horsebox so I dropped them in there and Scarlett and I caught the others up.
We met Mel & Em at the pier to hand Bonnie over. Scarlett did her now traditional falling over at the pier (I think this is the third time she has managed it as we wait for the ferry to leave the island :rolls: ) She was fine aside from a scraped thigh, knee, elbow and ego… We got on board the calmac and headed off to Canna. When we go off on a Wednesday it always seems a good idea to head to Canna as the boat stays there for just over 2 hours before going back to Rum and then on to the mainland. We always spend the morning of a day when we are going off all stressed about going off so leaving on the first boat and then relaxing seems a good idea.
On the way to Canna we chatted a bit to Steve who I had arranged to have a bit of a catch up meeting with and were joined by Alistair the film making man too which was all very sociable.  We handed over 6 duck eggs to Gina who works in the kitchen as we’d been promising them for months. The boat was filled with OAPs doing the non landing cruise and reporters and papparazzi there to interview folk on Canna about the theft. We wandered along the shore road, said hello to a few folk we know there, chatted to Julie in the shop between TV interviews, bought some lip balm from the new Hebridean Beauty shop there and then went back on board the Calmac. Steve rejoined us for a bit more chatting and we may catch up with him tomorrow as he is bringing his in laws to the show. At Rum Steve got off and Lesley got on, along with various other Rum folk. We chatted to Josephine for a while – she is the deer project leader and before we knew it we were pulling in to Mallaig.
A quick pop to the CoOp for various things and then we were off. Scarlett, Davies and I all took it in turns to sit in the front as both of them feel car sick. I don’t travel super well in the back either and poor Lesley at 7 months pregnant was just wedged into her seat! We stopped just once at the Green Welly Stop where I turned my phone on and got a voice mail from Mel to say that they had gone to feed the croft animals and realised there was a chicken trapped in the caravan! After we’d all stopped laughing – that must surely be the funniest voicemail ever – I rang her back to tell her where the key was hidden. She safely evicted the chicken later that evening…
We got to Edinburgh by 10 which was good time, and dropped Lesley off at her Travelodge, then stopped for a quick McDonalds as we were all hungry before getting to Dave’s. He showed us round the flat and then headed off leaving us to it.
I had a failed bath as the water was not hot enough but I had already got my hair wet so had a shower instead. We were all knackered after 12 hours boat and driving so were in bed not long after we arrived.