Summer in Scotland.

All blog fans may be wondering where we have been over the past few months. Having Sarah’s friends with us was really not too much and the world isn’t flat and we haven’t fallen off the edge. We have in fact been back home.

After the girls left in late may we got word that my Mother was unwell so we decided to leave the boat in Grenada rather then go to Trinidad, and catch an earlier flight home. It took us about a week to put Swiftwing to bed, we removed everything that looked as though it could increase our windage or could develop legs in our absence. On the 21^st May we caught the plane home to Glasgow.

Struan and Helen Morgan met us at the airport and Helen very kindly gave us the loan of her car. Mum had been taken into hospital that day, so we headed for Stirling Royal.

Fortunately, all turned out well and Mum was soon back home and making bread again. I was then asked by the girl who got my old job if I wanted a job working in Gigha, as the District nursing team was very short staffed. After a little bit of thought we decided that this was probably a good idea and headed for Gigha at the beginning of July for a weeks trial. We enjoyed it so much that we stayed the summer, ten day on the island and ten days off to tour and visit.

We had a delightful summer, it was good to get back to grass roots nursing and it was lovely to meet up with my old friends, and at least now I am an expert on bites and jelly fish stings and my advice to anybody going to see the band, “Skerryvore” is to go into training several weeks beforehand and wear sensible shoes.                                                                                         

With lots of time off between working we saw parents, Sarah and Struan, lots of friends and managed a lot of walking, climbed some hills and Duggie managed a bit of sailing, the North British Championships on a top notch boat called “Salamander XII”, West Highland week with Owen and Joanna McManus, and helping to take a Catamaran through some of the Union Canal back to Campbeltown for Tony and Jane on Gigha.

We also managed to have a week in Colonsay and were lucky enough to be able to go to Flora McNeill’s 90^th birthday party which was a lovely event held in the Colonsay Hotel. Again we visited old friends and all our old haunts and had beautiful weather. There is nothing quite like Kiloran beach on a crisp clear day in November.

Our visit home was coming to a close but we had one last weekend in Killin with Sarah, Struan and Will and the dogs. We all enjoyed the walking but Murphy (the cat) didn’t enjoy the disruption.