After leaving Ben Nevis we drove through the Scottish country side past Loch Lochy (OMG we were so dumb we thought it was Loch Ness!) and then the mighty Loch Ness! We arrived in Findhorn that night and met Caitlin (Gordie's niece), Ali (his sister) and Jonathan (her husband). After a veggie spag bol we went out side to meet Caitlin's three horses, Amos, Afric and Milo! Amos turned out to be around Lochy's height and looked almost exactly like our old Darby!(Minus the stripe and the old age!). He is and pure Exmoor pony and as I found out later is fast like my bestest pony ever (aka LOCHY!). Any way I liked him heaps (But not as much as Lochy or Darby).

Afric (af-Ric) was a dapple grey Eriskay (e-Risk-A) pony and dear little Milo was the cutest little miniature Shetland pony in the world! We found that Caitlyn's friend Esther had a white-grey Highland pony called Corrie in the same paddock with Amos, Afric and Milo. We had desert and went to bed in Caitlyn's room.

The next day was Burgie International Horse Trials(!) like three miles down from Caitlyn's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Mum and Dad drove Abbey, Caitlyn, Esther and I to the trails where we saw the local RAF (Royal Air Force) training boys in their really funny uniforms trying to direct traffic ( Dad almost ran the smallest one over!). Then we walked to the main arena and saw of all things DOG agility. There were hundreds of dogs basically every one had at least one dog! Back home our pony club and the riding club don't even let dogs on the grounds! That shows you that even highly strung one & two star cross country champs can deal with a few puny dogs!!! Mum even saw a lady buy two ice creams, one for her, one for her dog. These peeps are crazy about their dogs! Anyway we walked around the stands until 11:30 (Am) when the one star cross country started! I tried getting photo's for the first and second horse but they were blurry, so I got some films of the horses jumping (I don't know how to put them on youtube). My favourite one star horse was Silent Whisper a chestnut (the only one on the course) with a blaze. After CC* event ended we walked to the competitors stables and met the horses who all loved some good quality patting and scratching. In the second stable we met Longwood (Woody for short) who became my two star favourite! We had a Ice cream and then the CC** event started and we watched Longwood go over his course. Then watched some show jumping.

When we came home we rode our own champions! Amos and I, Milo and Abbey, Mum and Corrie and Caitlyn and Afric. Gordon was there and helped Abbey with her wild mount! Milo took off with Abbey on his back and while Abbey held on for dear life we all cracked up laughing, the look on her face!

The next day we rode with Esther on the beach.

We went galloping along the sand taking turns riding the bigger ponies. We let Milo off the lead (Big Mistake) and the crazy little pony went Waco! I was riding Afric and was busy telling Abbey to slow Corries and Afric is one moment trotting quietly and then BUCK(!) BUCK(!) and I fell off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It didn't hurt but I just could not believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had sand all down one side of my jeans! Any way while I fell off every one was watching Milo rearing and bucking and having heaps of fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

So I hopped back on my dear Amos rode with the others back to Caitlyn's.

We dressed up in the Boutique (a exchange clothes place).Abbey wore this silk night gown and a big furry hat and a horrid purple coat also made out of silk!

The next day Caitlyn had a day off school and we taught Amos and Afric to do liberty. Esther came back from school and did work with Corrie while we rode. Abbey rode Amos ( Milo stayed behind to keep Corrie company.) and Caitlyn rode Afric until we got to the beach and I rode Amos back. Caitlyn and I rode up to the fence of the RAF base and then galloped along the grass under the power wind mills back to where we met Abbey and then went back to Caitlyns.

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Frances

When we were first planning the trip and told Gordon we were coming to visit him he asked where else we would visit and whether we were likely to visit Findhorn. I had heard of Findhorn and knew it was supposed to be a magical place, fairies and the like... but also a beautiful garden so I said why not, a nice balance after all the Buddhism and Hinduism of India and the girls are always complaining that adults just don't believe in magic anymore. So I read the Findhorn Garden book to find out more about it but I never realised that Gordon's sister Ali, is married to Jonathan Caddy, son of the original founders, Eileen and Peter (along with their friends Dorathy, ROC and Sir George). Eileen is the one who heard the inner voice that told her to create Findhorn and Peter gave up his influential job as manager of a fancy hotel to carry out the directions. Dorathy was the one who spoke to the spirits of the plants, ROC (Robert Ogilvie Crombie) was the one who spoke to the elementals (earth spirits) and I cant remember Sir George's role. Anyhow they created the community of Findhorn out of a sandy old caravan park and it became one of the most famous organic and eco aware communities in the world, holding workshops and advising on both the environment and spirituality, with involvement at UN level. Only Dorathy is still alive at 91 but Findhorn lives on and Eileen's writings are in the Scottish museum of heritage.

Anyhow that's not what Gordon had in mind at all!! Ali and her daughter Caitlin are into horses and have one of the rare Eriskay ponies and a couple of others and have also become keen on Natural Horsemanship of which there are few instructors but they do know a girl who is working on her level two and has been giving them some good help. Gordon figured that we could go stay, do some riding and pass on a few tips. And so we did. The girls were thrilled by all the horsey stuff. I particularly enjoyed the ride to the beach. Gerard and I also enjoyed Findhorn!!

Johnathon gave us a tour of the beautiful buildings and gardens that have and are being built. We went sailing on Johnathan's little boat, Gordon came up to meet us there and we had lots of good food and tales.

Then the blooming van insurance caused some more 'dramas' meaning we had to stay on another couple of days and we ended up being there for the summer solstice... So we made a midnight visit (its still light at that time in Scotland!!) to the stone Sanctuary – a circular stone building cut into the side of the hill with a grass roof and unusual windows.

Inside there is a bench/seat around the wall with a sculptured rock in the centre on which sits a flower encircled candle. We didn't see any fairies or fauns but it was a magical moment with the candle on and the beautiful quiet of the gorgeous building. We could see magic in the heart and soul that people have devoted to the place, and Johnathan, Ali and Caitlin are certainly Faer folk. Once again it was so lovely to find such special people in the world.

Camille

Find horn is so pretty. The caravan park had beautiful flowers all other over the place it was so cute and homey looking. Oh it was so annoying when Milo ran off. I had to hang on for dear life and Frances and the others just laughed!!!!!! not funny at all =( . I also cantered him on the beach (once and only once)it was so hard to cling on and rrrrrrrrrrr my legs where soooooooo! Sore! But apart from that. Milo was so totally mine! 

RMS

ABBEY

Ben Nevis

From Gordon 's we headed north to Fort William to stay in Glen Nevis, a beautiful caravan park nestled at the foot of Ben Nevis... our next mountain to climb!!
Ben Nevis is the highest peak in Scotland but also in the UK. Snowdon was the high in Wales, Scarfell Pike was highest in England and Ben Nevis is the highest overall. Together they make up the Three Peaks. There is a Three Peaks Challenge that is done over 24 hours!!!!!! (Not our idea of fun.) And there is the general challenge of climbing the three peaks which many, but not very many do over time. A kind of unspoken club.
We prepared well for this our hardest climb yet. We divided it into 'chai shop' stops and took treats for the equivalent of six of these stops in order to get the balance just right as per the Triund climb. You know this all started because Antoinette took us on that first mountain climb!

Anyhow the weather was good although the cloud covered the peak and stayed thus for the whole experience. It took from 9.30am till 6.00pm there and back with an hour of breaks and an hour of playing at the peak. It was a very steep climb, a beautiful path for most of the way and absolutely stunning scenery. The girls were awesome and, as usual on our climbs, were congratulated for their efforts by many who passed. We collapsed exhausted and aching into our beds but very pleased with ourselves.

It is very hard to put into words.... all those things you think as you trudge up and up... the challenge, the way we approach challenges... and then down and down... and the views, the extraordinary magnificence of this planet... The pictures when I sort and load them may show something of it but really it is to be experienced!!

cheers Camille

A week with Gordie

We have spent this week at Gordon's, near Skipness, Kintyre... as in the Mull of Kintyre... complete with mist rolling in!! It is lovely to see Gordie again and catch up with what he is up to. Gordon was always there when we lived in Kiddam. His family had a holiday cottage down the road and he grew up spending his holidays 'sauntering' in the same hills and valleys that I did. He was a good friend of Mom and Avner's - fishing, swimming, playing recorder, making hay...


We have climbed yet another peak, this one, the highest on Arran, the island that Gordon's wee house looks out to. The top of Goats Fell was, as most peaks in the UK, cloud covered, cold and windy, only this one didn't clear as we have been so fortunate so far. Instead we enjoyed a good Scottish mist, or was it drizzle, for a view. But the views on the way down, below the cloud line, were spectacular.


We went with Gordon to bring in the sheep for the shearer and see the farm that he works on, a vast estate that is engaged in forestry, farming and nature conservation. Gordon has written a very involved nature plan for the estate, for the foundation to which the farm belongs and I am currently reading my way through it; the attempt to manage nature in the aftermath of hundreds of years of human intervention – farming and forestry is now an integral part of the plan as we have killed off so many natural predators and habitats!

Gordon set his moth trap as part of his endeavour to keep an eye on what is happening out there and I took great delight in practising macro with my fancy new camera.

We visited the owl centre and saw the most bizarre looking birds! Fascinating but quite spooky looking really! We walked in 'ancient' forests across the road from his house and down by the shore. These are as old as they get here, nothing like the untouched old growth in Australia, but amazing that they exist at all given the size, population and history of Britain! The little sessile oaks twisted and gnarled were maybe 300 years old, nothing much younger because of the grazing of sheep and now the deer, but people are working on it. We went otter spotting and saw one some way off frolicking on the rocks and rolling in the water. I took a shot but he was beyond the range of my telescopic!! But I got some lovely pictures of the bay anyway.

Gerard and the girls have been reading, reading, reading. Gordon has his grandfather's library so Gerard has been partaking of a little of everything from Thoreau to Charles Darwin... I think the books may be as old as the forests here.

Kiddam Hill is a quaint cottage amongst towering pines. Walking in a pine forest which was once a wild rugged moor, one feels as if the dark windless expanse of trees aught not to be there. A thick carpet of pine needles coats the forest's floor and the smell of pine sap settles in and around you as you walk further and further into the trees. On the inside of the trees, branches have no needles on them. The trees appear to be almost dead but if you look up you can see green needles high above you. Maybe you will stumble onto a clearing, where moss covers the small patch of ground where the sun light still manages to shine through. If you stand in the centre of the clearing and look back into the trees you notice why no other plant may grow there; no sunlight can penetrate the thick covering of the pines needles.

Out on the moor cotton grass and buttercups dance with the chilly wind. Down in the valley a stream merrily makes its long journey to the sea.

Water gurgling through the rocks. A pheasant lets his cry echo over the valley and a hawk sails high on an updraught. Two little fawns lay cuddled up next to each other in the thick grass, you walk up almost able to touch them. A log lays some what slanted over a small valley. Walking over it you think what would happen if you fell, and wobble... But don't fall, you just keep on walking until you reach the other side. You walk further and you are in a meadow of blue bells, upon lying down the sweet scent of the flowers finds it's way into your nostrils, cooling and calming.

Opposite you is a cleared hill, dismembered tree branches lie scattered over the hillside like after a battle. Grey stumps stick out of the mass of severed and crushed limbs, severed by the chainsaw and crushed by the bulldozer. A single tree stands, it is dead and some what alone, in the mass of destruction. Sadness overwhelms you as you see this sad sight.

Mum, Abbey, Dad and I have seen some places over here where we have said 'I would like to live there if we won tattslotto' (most of the places are the 'big house' of the property). In the time when the 'big hooses' (as they are called in Scotland) were in their day, there would be in a estate a big house and many little cottages that belonged to the big houses owner, for example Kiddam Hill, Thickside, Pengrain and Ashybank the cottages and Garwald is the big house. Eskdalemuir is very remote and beautiful, but I could never leave our home, our friends and our animals.

James is a falconer (they say FOL-coner and we saw fAlconer). He breeds hybrids, and has Merlins, Peregrine and one that starts with G but I can't remember its name! He has 'hat birds' they are falcons who have been raised by him so they think they are humans and when they are older the start 'soliciting' us humans aka checking us out! The reason they are called hat birds is; they mate hats. Weird isn't it? And really gross too!

We are now at Gordon's place and have, in the past few days, met Hilda and her sons (she one of Mums old school friends), seen Rachelle (another school friend) and her parents then visited Anna and Garth (Tong-Len funds peeps) and their grandchildren and daughter, went shopping in Edinburgh I bought some jeans and some tops and abbey got some stuff two. We saw the Castle, it has cliffs all around it except for the entrance. We looked at the Irvine family names and then at some kilts and badges.

When we were at Gordon's I read 'A Shop On Blossom Street'. It is a really nice book (maybe not for boys) about a lady who has had cancer two times and after the second time she sets up a shop called A Good Yarn. There are three other ladies; Alix the punk who has anger problems, Jacqueline a lady who her son (in her eyes) has married beneath him and Carol a lady who really wants to be a mother but twice the IVF has failed and this is her last chance... Any way they all go to Lydia's beginners knitting class and ….........

Since we didn't have time to finish Darby, let alone Rasin or Strange Town, here are some photos of Darby...

I have to go and clean the caravan, because Abbey and I have been sleeping in there while Mum and Dad sleep in the house! So the caravan is very very very very very very very (Do you get the picture ?!) VERY messy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Frances

We wake up and get dressed. Today we are going to Edinburgh to look at a castle where the King and Queen of Scotland lived. We walk up a windy path to the castle. We see the price and decide not to go in.. We go to a Scottish shop and look at the tartans. There are many of the tartans so we look for mum's tartan which is the Ervin, but they don't have it so we look for the other way of spelling it which is Irvin. They don't have Irvin either only in a tie that dad does not want so we go down the stairs to look for more but there aren't any. We discover mum's family coat of arms which is something with holly on the top of the helmet and on the shield.

We leave and go down the royal mile for a bit and then we go shopping for clothes for me and Frances. I get a green and a black top with black three quarter length shorts and tight jeans that need a belt. Frances, as she told you, gets one pair of cool tight jeans and two or three cool tops. After we go back to Anna's place and have a lovely Indian meal that Anna's daughters Indian husband have made; it was so good. We say he should start up an Indian shop in Tasmania (that's where they are moving ). The next morning we leave for Gordon's, a friend of mum's.

We stayed nine days in Eskdalemuir. We all wanted to stay longer but we can feel the time passing too quickly and there is still such a lot to see and friends to catch up with. Still, I think I have managed to introduce my family to the joys of aimless rambling up and down the hills and valleys of wandering streams. The girls also climbed Ettrick Pen on an incredibly hot day and Abbey climbed it repeatedly as she spent some time sliding down the steep face of grass at great speed! The last day I took them to the waterfall at Garwald thinking only to show them as I was sure it would be too early in the season to swim but to our surprise it was deliciously warm and we had a wonderful time. I caught up with Rachel then, she drove up from England and met us for dinner. We walked around Garwald and the cottage that she had lived in remembering old times.

The next day we met again at Hilda's for lunch at her beautiful farm on the Castle Milk Estate near Lockerbie. Its nearly 30 years since I saw Hilda but we were good friends at primary school and wrote for many years. Her family are lovely and it was a short but enjoyable visit. Then we rushed back to say our goodbyes to James, Edda, Thiane, Chelsea and Tina (Edda's mum is visiting from South Africa) before we took the windy road through Ettrick to Lindean, near Selkirk, where Rachel's parents live now.

Allan and Marie have not changed at all... well except for the fact that we all have much whiter hair than we had in those days! They tell a good yarn and we stayed up late catching up on as much as we could. Next day we were off to Alnwick Castle where Harry Potter was filmed so we had to press on but I am sure we could have talked for longer. While places seem to have shrunk since I was little, people's conversations have grown. They have both retired now, from gamekeeping and nursing, with all the things they know about forestry and wildlife, estates and their politics, the stories are fascinating...

The castle was excellent - still in use by the Percy family who took it over 700 years ago. They have a wide range of activities to amuse children and adults but just wandering around the stately rooms in which they live for the winter months was awe inspiring. Both girls are determined to marry Dukes or other such Castle owners that may be available!!

We pressed on to Edinburgh to camp at Anna and Gareth's. There too, we kept them up late talking, about Tong-len. They are the fund raising peeps (as Frances says) and it takes all their waking moments and its all voluntary. Thank you to those of you who sent your donations to our little friends - be assured that nearly every cent is directly given to the children - the building of the new hostel that will take another twenty children as well as the new teacher for the tent school, uniforms and books for the tent school kids that are able to go to government schools, and of course the health care, leaving only a small amount that must pay Tashi and Jamyang to direct the whole project. We met Rachel and her husband Powan and their three boys. Both were instrumental in the setting up of Tong-len. Rachel is a nurse and put together the health program and Powan, apart from being a brilliant chef, was the nursery teacher before Veeru.

We wandered around Edinburgh, gave the Castle a miss as we thought Alnwick may have been sufficient for the price!! and checked out the clans. Irvine in all its various spellings has a family motto that goes 'Sub sole sub umbra virens' - Flourishing in sunshine and in shade. Funnily enough, although there were a few clans in the northeast of Scotland there was also those that lived just near Eskdalemuir!! Maybe that is why it feels so much like home. It was raining so we didn't venture to the zoo or the botanical gardens but the shopping was good for the girls!

Next day we drove to Gordon's passing by Loch Lomond on the way to Tarbert. Gordon is working so we spent yesterday catching up on those things that one does whether or not on holiday. Today the weather is fine again and we will go see this new world. On the weekend we will go rambling with Gordie!

Camille

Well, Eskdalemuir was/is certainly a revelation. It still maintains its majesty, amongst the plantings of pine and extractions for pulp and electricity. Etrick Pen, the waterfall, the meandering walks all met my mind well, and thence onto Gordies, via friends, Castle and Edinburgh. Pleasant days indeed and a library of books, some marked by age, but none who words fail to engorge a patient and enquiring mind. So what of Gerard's mind rambles I hear you mutter...here is something for you to ponder from Gordon's treasure trove, from Henry Thoreau's Essays on walking 1862.

“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilisation: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understand the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, - who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who rove about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretence of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte Terrer,” a Saunterer - a Holy Lander. They who never go to the holy lands in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds: but they who do go there are Saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.... For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this holy land from the hands of the infidels.

…...So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly then ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in Autumn.”

Gerard

To Kiddam Hill

Hello

On Friday we walked up Kiddam Hill. Any way when we were coming down Mum stopped in a clearing (Kiddam Hill, like every where else near Mums old house, covered with pine trees). Mum built one slate house and then we all built one. I made a Darby (he died ten days before Christmas last year) memorial, so we named the town Darby, it is not open to 'fairy' public yet but will be opened along with two other new towns called Rasin (after Thiane and Chelsea's rabbit who only ate raisins and biscuits and Strange town (after the very strange tree that is near).

Mum and Dad went down the hill back to the caravan and Mum bought Thiane and Chelsea up to the town! We all made more houses and then went down to the house and played with their guinea pigs and then made a hut outside. We fed the hedgehog and it bit Thiane and would not let go it kept on tugging and tugging on her finger!

It was Chelsea's birthday party on Sunday and she had some friends over. Eda got the boat out and we paddled around the dam and two of the little girls went swimming (They were in for maybe five seconds before screaming and screaming until they got out!). We had cake and lots of sweets and James teased me about being a vego that eats fish! He must think its very funny to see me get frustrated. Abbey, Thiane, Chelsea, Stephanie, Daniel and I made a fort in the pine forest. It has walls as high as my waist made out of sticks from the pines around us, I collected hundreds of pine cones to peg at peeps we did not like!The next day Daniel, Abbey and I made the walls higher while Thiane and co made a mini one!

HAPPY BITHDAY TO YOU!

It's Camille's 21st birthday to day.

And sorry Esther who had the big 13th birthday a few weeks ago!!!

We are in Carlisle and have not accomplished very much over the course of the day.....

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Lov ya all

Frances

Scar Fell Pike

Scar Fell Pike was a climb and a half. We started out and the day was supposed to be pretty good. The way was steep and the track rocky and uneven, and there were no chai shops like on our climb of Triund. Halfway up we met one climber on the way down who said it was hailing at the top. Look out! By the time we got to the top, the weather cleared...for a while, and we started our trek down. The view was of course fantastic.

We heard one almighty crack of thunder on the way down, and lightning was striking, but not near us, fortunately. But the rain bucketed, and we had a dousing of light hail to accompany us. We were sodden by the time we reached base camp...the camper. The sirens were alive in the valley as we made a cuppa...Four people a little ways away from us on their climb were hit by lightning. One tossed 30 metres or so, and all hospitalised but Ok. Helicopters and ambulance involved in the rescue.

The girls found this climb a little tough, but they slogged it out to their credit, with the assistance of encouragement from Camille in the guise of planning their future riding stables!

Cheers Gerard

Our journey from the Lake District was fairly short but we stopped in Carlisle for a bit of shopping – cold weather clothes, the weather has changed since the lightning strike – then on to Lockerbie to see the old Laundry Cottage on the Castle Milk Estate where Grandad lived when he moved to Scotland.

Generally the Estate is falling down now but there are still remains of the walled in gardens and gardeners terraced cottages and the Laundry Cottage is still in good repair. There are a lot of keep out signs which made the kids very nervous even though we stopped by the main office to ask permission, so we pressed on, past my old high school and along the road to Kiddam Hill.

Mostly every thing was the same till we came through Eskdalemuir. Here one can see exactly how the forestry that we were so against way back then has come to be everything that we thought it may be. The last big sheep farm in Eskdalemuir that was owned by the Cartners was sold last year to forestry, old Mrs Cartner died shortly after at the ripe old age of 104... they say it was what finished her. The school has closed and the children who live in our house at Kiddam tell me there are only seven children in the valley now. The Tibetan centre, Sameling, has spread out now so that it owns most of the village houses nearby. The fences have gone so that the garden and temples extend way to and down the road as far as the village hall.

The 'track' , the five mile dirt road to our house is wide and straightened, trafficked by several semi trailers each day hauling the logs from behind Garwald and Monkenshaw, Ashy Bank and all the way up the road to and beyond Kiddam and Thickside to the moors. What had, while we lived here, been left as wide open valleys for the purpose of creating wild life corridors between the lifeless, silent, mono-culture of sitka spruce forests have all but gone, planted down to the rivers edge after we left, probably around the time the Forestry Group running the forests then, under the guidence and good sense of the Head Gamekeeper Ronnie Rose, dissolved. The valley is consequently narrower and darker than it was when I roamed it as a child... except where they have felled and replanted, which is the typical mess we see in the Tassie replants.

Fortunately for Kiddam, the previous owners took them to court to prevent the trucks trundling passed the house, on the grounds it was shaking the foundations and so the trucking road by-passes the house creating a larger more private garden space. From the old sheep dip the road side has been planted out in more trees... of the deciduous kind, so that the house is invisible as you approach. The river has been diverted to feed a pond in the paddock where we kept the sheep when they were lambing. In the middle of the pond is an island and the rest of the paddock has been planted in more trees.... with a pagola. The pond flows over a weir that feeds a turbine that they are still struggling to make functional. Everything is smaller and shorter than I remember, not only because the trees are pressing in. Mom's vegie garden which stretched all the way down to the old barn (no longer there) at the junction of the two rivers is not much bigger than my own garden! I have a feeling of returning to Narnia and Cair Pavarel is all over grown, but as I arrive it becomes more familiar.

Edda and James and their two children Chelsea and Thiane are lovely. Edda is a vet in Carlisle, James breeds hybrid birds of prey which he sells to the Arabs for amazing amounts of money. It was Chelsea's seventh birthday so we shared her cake with them and they gave me a tour of the house. The girls sleep in my bedroom, Chelsea has her bed just where mine was. It was late when we went out to watch James feed the chicks. One hungry critter had just recovered from a intestinal operation, at only nine days old he is worth a staggering 8000 pounds!! We camped in their yard for the night.

Next day we set our 'pitch' down where the two rivers meet on the road to Thickside. This side of the valley is more open. Its only a toddle for the kids to go to play. Thiane is Abbey's age. They have had a lovely time feeding the recovering hedgehog, playing in the stream and building fairy houses from slate. The very cold rainy day the children played till they where drenched then went in to watch dvds – imagine tele at Kiddam (we only just got a generator before we left – it was all candles and paraffin lamps way back then!! We joined them after dinner for a cuppa and a movie.

Yesterday was Chelsea's birthday party. The girls went off playing with the bunch of kids up and down the stream, in the forests, generally doing what you do when you live at Kiddam!! Very strange really. Meanwhile Gerard and I took Skye,

 the would-be sheep dog, for a walk to the top of Ettrick Pen which I never did when I lived here, although its presence always beckoned. Compared to the last two peaks that we have mastered Ettrick was only a half the size, but the valley lies deep in 40 years worth of uneaten grass and gravel from an ever changing river bed. As the stream meanders from side to side the banks grow steep and eroded or soft and boggy so that crossing back and forth is the way up.

Near Pengrain cottage the clearfell was even harder to negotiate combining bog with bulldozer tracks, branches and stumps. From there the stream meets the many brooks which feed it and disappear up a variety of steep gullies overhung with well grown pines. We picked one we thought was heading in the right direction and clambered up to the moors. The tufts of grass were deep and uneven and the cold wind bitter but we battled to the top.

The view was fantastic. We could see all the way out to the Solway Firth, maybe even to Scar Fell and back up over the moors that lead past Ettrick to the Highlands. There the black wild weather brewing threatened to blast us off the top so we took refuge just below the brow sinking into the heather and breathing in the dank moss while we ate our lunch and Skye snoozed. On our way down we stumbled upon two tiny fawn stashed in the long grass soaking up the warm sun of the sheltered valley. Skye went right up without them moving, we called him off and I took photos. By the time we got back the party was over. Edda and James invited us for dinner and we spent an enjoyable evening showing pictures of the old Kiddam and comparing snow stories!!

Today the sun is sparkling and the skies are blue. I think we will take the kids for a wander. Cheers Camille