Holiday to Scotland

Ok, so I’ve been away in Aviemore for the last week…

The weather has been mixed, with yesterday being drizzley – the light type that seems to soak you, so we pretty much had to have a wet playtime ie stayed indoors most of the day after a quick trip out to Grantown-on-spey. Today started off dull but began to clear, then rained and by the time I had to catch the train we had patches of blue sky as the clouds were breaking up.

The train was slightly delayed, but not an issue as I had an hour in Edinburgh before my connection, so happily I went along. We then had an announcement that there were problems at Edinburgh Haymarket with flooding and to expect delays. I asked the conductor as he came round how long these delays were, he said up to and over an hour in some cases… Oh dear.

So, after battling our way through to Waverley as being marooned in water between the two stations, I arrived. Only to then be met by all trains south-bound were cancelled as there was major problems at Newcastle and announcements claiming ‘please do not travel today unless absolutely necessary’

Well, I would never have ended up here if you had told me at Aviemore!!

I was fuming, why couldn’t they have made an announcement up there that no trains were travelling, or even that there was flooding?? I could have stayed up there an extra night and avoided the need to book a hotel room for the night in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival!!

Absolutely atrocious, fair enough, they did have a coach service running to Newcastle, but as the motorway into Edinburgh was also flooded, I imagine it would’ve been at least a 2/3/4 hour journey to Newcastle, then to fight onto a train a long with hundreds of others, I’d be surprised if I even managed to catch the last train home, either that or I wouldn’t be arriving home until the early hours of the morning…

So here I am in a nice hotel room, it’s not massive as it was the last single available but it’ll do for me as I’m grateful to even have one. And yes, it has given me the opportunity to see the festival, but I can’t really enjoy it because my bag is so amazingly heavy from the laptop and camera + lenses.

Anyway, onto the holiday… No photos just yet, because I forgot the camera cable like a nonce, but I do have some nice photos… Alas, no crested tits this time round at Abernethy, although I did get to see the Osprey actually on the nest for once! I also *think* I saw a Goldcrest, all I know it was a teeny tiny little bird in the trees, but the photo doesn’t show the face as it was looking up at the time. We’ll see once I have it downloaded onto the lappie. Plenty of red Squirrels around the cottage this year, at least two nursing females, I think they were both pregnant again though because they had the same bumps on their sides like a gerbil does when carrying, we also had two different youngsters and a male.