Friday afternoon - Magpiewolf and me arrived at Red Squirrel campsite about 5pm in her big luton van; Magpie drove over from Aberdeenshire, I came up from Hereford on the train. The journey for me was lovely, through the mountains and across the wild Rannoch Moor ...
When we got to Red Squirrel we found Colin's tipi - wey hey! People! Jason and Ally were hanging nearby and then Bob came over as well.
Ally kindly organised his tarp to give us all somewhere to sit out, jason got his Hive stove going - excellent, I shall be getting the extension for my Honey - and we stuck our sausages on sticks and cooked them up ... delicious
I set up my hammock - first time "in anger" (ie out of the garden
). They really are comfortable to sleep in although it took me a while to get the hang of the under-quilt but the 2nd night was much more satisfactory. I put an ordinary sleep-mat in the pocket in my DD Travel hammock and found that was good too.
Saturday - Magpie and me, and the two young whippets, went for a gentle bimble up to Loch Achtriochan - about 1.5 miles up the road past the Clachaig Inn and just across the A82. I've driven past the loch and the lovely cottage that nestles at the bottom of the Bidean nam Bian several times and always wanted to go there, stop and look, now was the opportunity.
The Bidean nam Bian is the majestic range of mountains on the south side of Glen Coe. It holds the Three Sisters in one of which is Oisins Cave. I couldnt even think of walking there as my feet are still not good and I cant wear boots yet.
My latest novel is partly set in the land around Loch Achtriochan so going there was great to be there and I wanted to see the Am Bodach (the Mountain Herdsman) who stands at the far end of the lake - he's important to he story
. while we were by the loch I heard what i thought might be an eagle, very high up over the Am Bodach, later Gaz said he'd seen one as their party walked back from the hidden valley along the ridge. And on our way home we found an antler dropped by a deer a while back - it was a bit greenish and chewed! - it's come home with me and we'll see what it want to be in due course
.
That night we had a trout each, split open with garlic and butter, wrapped in foil and vooked in the embers of the wood-burning stove in Fiona's van.
On Sunday everyone except Bob and us had to go home for work on Monday. Fiona and had a lazy sort of day furtling with hammocks and tarps and different combinations of them. And we played with the dogs - Fiona has a pair of young whippets, 10-month old Wicket the Wicked Whippet (black & white) and 4-month old Rocket (blue brindle
but she often looks pink to me!). She would like both of them to sleep in the hammock with her but they wont yet, however our afternoon got Rocket to be well happy with the idea.
We finished the afernoon with a walk along the river Coe ...
For supper we had haggis and pigeon breasts - the latter done in foil in the embers again, with butter and garlic. We finished the haggis for breakfast on monday morning
.
Looking forward to hearing (and seeing pictures) of what others did