Goodbye to all that

9 am   

Alderdale Bed & Breakfast in Luss.
Delightful and dog friendly.

We leave Luss after breakfast and set off on the magnificent road to Skye via Rannoch Moor, Glen Coe, places and landmarks with evocative, magical names like Loch Lochy and Glengarry and Eilean Donan...

        The last time we attempted to journey together into the great MacStretches, we’d planned to camp. Under canvas. In October. The notion being we might avoid the worst of the midges.

        For that great adventure, Shedley bought a pop-up tent with the aim of saving himself the protracted, onerous and largely solitary labour of erecting the big tent on single-night-stop-overs.

 Our first and, as it turned out, only single-night-stopover, was still in England. We had lingered to admire the Angel of the North and so were in Northumberland when it began to get dark and we thought we should find somewhere to stop for the night. 

        As we entered a surprisingly full campsite it began to rain heavily.

        It rained especially heavily on Shedley who, 20 minutes later, was still outside in the rain. Having casually popped-up the pop-up tent in three seconds as promised by the instructions, he was having considerably more difficulty inflating the airbed which did not want to be inflated and sought only to fight him and do mischief.

        I stayed in the dry car with the dogs. I brewed tea and listened to the dismal weather forecast on the radio and my husband's cries, strangely muted by the wind and the rain.

     

Not Going Abroad

Into the North

 7.00 am

Tiny place, big tree, bags of style and Christmas cheer

        Shedley looks relaxed. We’re on target to leave at 8.15am. He’s busy priming the two Global Positioning Systems. We own four but he’s agreed to leave two behind.

        We’re driving to the Isle of Skye for a week. We've rented a cottage in the Bay of Portree where the garden gives directly onto the water and the shoreline and thus everybody else's gardens. This promises to be scenic and also mildly terrifying with the dogs.
    
      To break the journey of some 650 miles and ensure we see the spectacular scenery of the final 150 miles, we're staying overnight in a place called Luss on the shores of Loch Lomond.  And we're stopping for lunch in Hale, deepest Wagland to drop in on old friends, see their new home and make the most of a rare opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives.
         
        The plan is to be with them 1pm-ish and be back on the road by 3pm. I feel confident we will make this...