Losing ourselves

Another typical family holiday morning today meant that breakfast began about 8.30am and trickled to an end around 11am - with at least one person not actually appearing at all. Himself had an appointment at the hospital to see a physiotherapist and took himself off, while I dismantled the breakfast table and tidied up.

Lunch took us to the lovely café at Blairmore, The Blairmore, followed by a walk at Ardentinny . Himself bailed out of the walk relatively early on, swiftly joined by the girls who had designs on the beach. Meanwhile I joined my son and his wife and promptly got a bit lost. It’s all the fault of forestry work on the hillside; we had planned on taking a steep path down to the beach through the birch woods but found ourselves struggling through bramble stems and felled branches and only the tiniest suggestion of a path until we came to a substantial … crag. There, we found a magnificent bit of rope belayed round a tree and leading, with knots set at intervals, down to an actual path . Reader, we didn’t. I would have, 25 years ago, but not today. We retraced our laborious steps and returned the way we’d come - passing en route the path we should have taken … I think we’d been blethering too much to notice.

Today’s photo shows a typical moment: Morgane is admiring the great view down Loch Long while Ewan surges on over the brambly debris. Great when it finished - and quite gratifying to have still been yomping when the need arose!