More than a touch of Autumn...

Wednesday September 30, 2009

Today is the best day in a while and Ian and Alison have gone to Inverness to see Dolan’s sister Janet and have lunch. It should be a lovely run there and back. In the last seventy + days we have only had twelve without rain, so today is a real bonus! I have been catching up on piles of washing and doing a general tidy up.

I have been very vexed for all the visitors who have come and been unable to see much of the beauty around. Walking has become a rare activity and umbrellas (very necessary) rarely seen, as the high winds would turn them inside out in a second…..

Our visitors have seemingly remained very good humoured and tolerant! Off they went into the grey mists, determined to make the most of each day... Jigsaws were finished with alarming speed and evenings round the fire were convivial. I was very pleased to welcome back Jutta and Harald, who arrived last year with their hire car more like a swimming pool – inside!

Ruah does not like being wet so, on goes the life jacket and off she gaily trots! Sponge has taken to talking a lot and commands attention!

The vege garden was dug over after the beetroot was lifted. Only the leeks remain. In the greenhouse many bunches of black grapes may yet fully ripen – if only we get a few days of sunshine……

Sam’s been up for a weekend and now John has been for a week too. Ian and Alison are here – it is marvellous to have them around! John was very helpful, doing little jobs around the house and garden. So my “to do” list has shrunk to nothing! He headed back to Edinburgh on Monday. Alison and Ian arrived last Wednesday and will stay till Tuesday – not long enough but just wonderful all the same. They are in the 6th week of their big tour and will be home in Toowoomba, Queensland in about three weeks I think.

I always seem to be talking about water/wet/damp etc! Well I can now add the wall between the kitchen and sitting room, bringing all the “wet” descriptions inside for the first time ever! A pipe running from the cold to hot tanks leaked – probably had been doing so for a long time and was not discovered till one morning recently a kitchen drawer was full of water. To cut a very long story short, the kitchen and sitting room walls (back to back) have to be dried out, now the leak has been traced and mended, plaster, tiles worktops, cupboards stripped off and renewed – and I am not looking forward to that….. It will happen in early November, when the last of this year’s visitors have departed.

Yesterday the three of us left here at 7.45am and motored to Armadale in south Skye. We caught the ferry to Mallaig, had a wait of about fifty minutes, and then boarded the “Loch Nevis”, which, on Tuesdays, goes to the little island of Muck. We had two hours on the island before doing the reverse trip and arriving home at 6.00pm.

“The” road on Muck is only a mile and a half in length. There are thirty five inhabitants, including six children and the main work is with sheep, cows and now tourists. There are two charming little shops, one of which is completely un-manned. It sells little souvenirs made by the children, cards, calendars, paintings and island produce.

A busy café is half of the other shop and all the food on offer seemed to be home-made. It was just a treat!

A monstrous cattle float has made the trip to the island on the ferry and it returned with a cargo of bulls and cows. They were to be transported to Dingwall, when they finally landed at Armadale – a long, long trip…..

Though the weather yesterday was not spectacular, we all enjoyed our outing to Muck immensely.

The days are speeding past and Ian and Alison’s time in Plockton is diminishing…..

I hope you are all well and have been enjoying good weather – I happen to know from a very recent email from Cid and Di Warden that the last month in Selsey has been just wonderful – well, it’s been so wet here there had to be very little rain left over for everywhere else!

Ann