We are now living down in England-shire, since Oct 2011 when Wes landed pretty much his dream job here, with a national health provider. Life is busy: happy baby, happy mum but messy house. Nina is a real people person so we need to get out and socialise as much as possible.

I have found a few draft posts from last year – I was obviously saving them for a rainy day, so will get them up soon.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy out there in blog land!

After a rather luxurious night in a B&B (in between two hostel stays), we made the trek to one of Scotland’s most isolated beaches. This is Sandwood Beach, and it can only be reached by a 4 mile walk in – and 4 miles back of course! As you can see from the grin on his face, Wes was in heaven!

We spent some lovely days hiking and exploring this natural wonderland, all from our base of the Achmelvich Youth Hostel. I think honestly we could have stayed for two or more weeks based near Lochinver and there’s no way we’d get bored. This area they call the Geopark, because of the unique geological formations all over. The oldest rocks in the world can even be found here. Absolutely fascinating, I probably should’ve studied geology, I am such a rock nerd. It is certainly the wild west as well, as there weren’t many people about at all. We managed to find a few geocaches during our express trip to the Northwest, but not nearly as many earthcaches as we could have found, if only we had more time!

This is the beach our youth hostel was on. You can see the peak on the right is Suilven, which we climbed while we were based there. It was possibly the toughest walk we’ve ever done.

The next photos are:

• Suilven from the ‘policeman’s helmet’ side, which is the peak we hiked up
• Me on the way back down to the saddle from the peak
• Suilven from the side, so you can see we went up to the saddle, then up to the right

I wish we’d had a chance to cover her in her raincoat before the weather changed. She has a thicker snow blanket now after snowing again yesterday and three showers already today. We will brave the weather soon to go to the gym and get some food!

Of course we had to nab at least one cache on our way out to the hike, so we nabbed the micro at Feugh Falls, and we had a DNF for a funky letterbox hybrid next to an ostrich farm. We had a lovely early dinner at the Potarch on our way home, and then it was time for bed!

The girls started at home where Magda, my Aberdeen honorary bridesmaid, had organised a fun night of punch and silly games, then we hit the town, firstly to a dodgy cheesy nightclub where we entertained ourselves with some ‘hens night dare cards’ (find the shortest man in the room and give him a kiss/do the chicken dance to the whole next song/do a sexy dance on the nearest table/pinch 10 mens bottoms in 60 seconds/do 5 press ups/find the man with the hairiest chest and rub your face on it/etc); before going to a proper nightclub where we ran into another stag do up from London. He’s getting married on 7th March, so to celebrate we had to do some shots together of course! At around 3.30am we met up with what was left of Wes’ bucks night, at the casino, before heading home with the all nighters to have some breakfast before hitting the sack. Needless to say, yesterday was a complete write-off and we are still feeling a bit dodgy today. Must be getting old eh.

We opened presents around the tree and called our families.

We drove hours through freezing fog and blinding winter sun, to see the sights of Scotland.

We tramped through valley, over moor and up hills,

We scrambled over slippery icy rocks, but we got nice views!

We slipped and slid on ice and admired the frozen landscape.

We made lots of sandwiches on the car with frozen fingertips.

We ate chocolates and tablet and leftover Rosemary the turkey until she came out our ears,

We drank water during the day, then at night bubbles and beers.

We played board games and giggled at nonsense.

We bought new pants at the Chemistore.

We shared a room all together for a week and didn’t get annoyed.

We stayed in a lighthouse with frozen pipes, then wasted a day looking for a shower that works.

We saw the New Year in with yummy local seafood; in a pub in a paddock in the middle of nowhere.

We received kisses from strangers at the ringing of the bells.

We lit Andy’s ‘Aussie’ rockets and drank Magda’s pink bubbles.

We were ‘Robbed’ in the lighthouse a few times each at various times.

We had an amazing week with Nick and Michelle.

We shared some good times with Magda and Andy too!

PS – Let Wes or I know if you want any pics at full size, we have some lovely widescreen wintery Scottish landscape shots.

5am – Woke up to make birthday cupcakes for my colleagues and friends, using Kristy’s amazing cupcake recipe. Yum! Then off to work.

3.45pm – Open work cards (very nice!) and present from Heather who sits across from me. She made for me a pretty origami flower ball to brighten up my desk!

4pm – Wes and I begin our road trip to meet John, Tiff and Gemma at the Fern Villa b&b, Ballachulish (pronouced Balla-hoolish), a drive of about 4+ hours.

4.15pm – Wes advises an ‘alternate route’ will be necessary due to ‘closed road’ on our intended route. Apparently we have to detour via Glasgow, adding an extra 1.5 hours onto planned journey. Something fishy here…

circa 6pm – I call John and Tiff to ask how their drive is going, John asks me ‘What time are your friends arriving in Glasgow?’, surprise ruined, John hangs up quickly!

7.45pm – pick up interlopers at Glasgow airport. Interlopers no more, Gerrod and Kristy join our birthday adventure, bringing with them gifts of Flight of the Conchords dvd and colourful birthday socks!

Friday 25th July

6am – I am woken by my alarm advising me it’s time to get up to meet John’s designated breakfast time of 7am.

6.05am – Back to sleep after re-setting alarm for 6.50am.

6.50am – Awaken to alarm followed by sister and parents calling from Oz! Hurrah! My birthday has begun! With a sparkle sparkle present of vouchers at Swarovski Crystal online store.

7.15am – Froot Loop breakfast, more phone calls and present opening, from Therese, Ray, Ty, Nic, Deb, Graham, Lyndon, Sarah, Jay, Lucy – a very cool bag, scarf and necklace:

8am – more present opening, this time from Wes – new waterproof jacket and a fly fishing lesson w00t!:

9ish – Pick up G&K from b&b up the road, and we’re off to Ben Nevis

10.30am – designated start time from post, after suffering abuse from Visitor Centre lady about our choice of clothes and lack of safety devices

sometime between 1 and 2pm – we reach the top, yes in cloud:

2.30pm – begin the descent back down:

8pm – showered and refreshed, we get our reward. A scrumptious indulgent shellfish platter for seven. Turned into an all-you-can-eat competition between two teams. It didn’t matter that after I was finished all-I-could-eat, I managed to gulp down 50 (yes) clams and mussels in an attempt to help my team win: we still lost. Apparently, even though we had very few clams and mussels left on our platter, langoustines and razor clams are ‘worth more’… Needless to say, I didn’t have much room for Wes’ surprise cake.

Wes uses all the tools available, while KJ tries not to laugh… and John… well… he looks happy…

Saturday 26th July

9am – our last meal with John, Tiff and Gemma before they head to Loch Ness and we show KJ and G around a small slice of our wonderful countryside.

10am-ish – Sightseeing begins, with a trip to Urquhart Castle, on Loch Ness and the day ends for me with yumbo venison casserole from Clachaig Inn, at Glencoe. Glencoe is one of my absolute favourite places in the world.

Sunday 27th July

9am – check out of David and Catherine’s b&b and into the Slug for the final day of sightseeing with G and Kj. We even ‘did an Uncle Bert’ to make sure we got everyone into at least one photo together.

4pm – After an almost-tearful farewell to Gerrod and Kristy at Glasgow airport, Wes and I headed back to Aberdeen. When I saw how near to the highway the Falkirk Wheel was, we took a quick side-trip.

Monday 28th July

9.30am – the birthday festivities continue! Wes takes me to visit Willie Banks, fly fishing instructor at Tilbouries on the River Dee, just past Maryculter (pronounced Mary-cooter). A few hours of tuition with no hook and we were ready to get a trout (after learning the water is currently too low for salmon, we lowered our expectations, well I did anyway). We didn’t catch anything, but our fishing arms ached and we were happy to have at least half-mastered a new activity.

What a weekend! Thanks to everyone who made it possible, mainly to my amazing man Wesley, who tried his best to keep secrets and still managed to surprise me with cake, fly fishing and a beautiful card. You rock my world!

Tonight’s tea is haggis (of the vegetarian variety), which I cooked and ate while I was writing this post:

Oh, one last thing. See if you can spot the difference between This year’s and last year’s birthday hikes. This year was Ben Nevis 1350m, last year Mt Snowdon 1085m.

Apparently there’s a rare dragonfly that only breeds at this loch. We didn’t see any, and even if we did, we wouldn’t have been able to tell if it was rare. Likewise for the various ‘rare mosses’ that we read about. I mean, without the guidance of my favourite expert, Professor Gordon, how would we have been able to tell? Actually while looking for a link to a pic and explanation of Gordon Hillman, I discovered the man really doesn’t have many photos on the web. For such an absolute legend, he really should be widely celebrated on the interweb. My next mission perhaps.

Back to the hike, I mentioned the strong cold wind that met us as we got to the loch, so we went from t-shirts and sunnies to winter woolies in a few short minutes. This is often the case when we’re out hiking in Scotland. We might wear shorts, t-shirts and sunnies, but we pack jumpers, waterproofs, scarves and beanies, because you never know what weather is around the corner. On our way back down the hill we met a couple of determined locals who had never hiked that hill before. We told them about the magical view rewarding them for making the steep ascent, and also about the cold wind at the top. The Scot replied with ‘We always say up here, if you don’t like the weather in Scotland, wait 20 minutes’. That pretty much sums it up!

On the way home we spottoed a small bird of prey on a roadside signpost. I dutifully pulled over so Wes could get a decent view. Turns out it was a kestrel, and aside from the Ospreys we saw at the osprey centre, this is our first proper ‘tick’ of a bird of prey! We saw lots and lots of big birds circling this weekend, but none of them close enough to know exactly what they were.