Just before I go away ...

here is what we did last time.

Last Friday we got up at the crack of dawn to catch the early ferry.

The cats did their best to keep us at home

Don't go! Don't go! We're gonna stay here til you switch off the engine and give up! 

I honestly think we should be allowed to embroider our names on the seats we normally sit in on the ferry as we use them so often. Anyway we drove to Wick where we picked up our friend A. We then carried  on south to the Highland Wildlife Park where we met up with some other mutual  friends and their four year old daughter, who were on holiday in Scotland from Truro.

It was a blazingly hot day which was nice in itself, although it did mean that most of the northern animals, which were what we were there mainly to see, were all taking shelter from that strange golden orb in the sky, and so were invisible! A major exception was the male polar bear

who was a bit of a poser to be honest. 

The wolf wood was closed for 'maintenance' apparently - wonder how the wolves felt about that?-  so we didn't see the wolves, and the lynx and snow leopards resolutely refused to put themselves on show. But we did manage a tiger, wild cats, snowy owls, the polar bear, arctic foxes, and right at the end the wolverine deigned to come out and bounce about for a bit. And we saw V and M and little A, which after all was the main purpose of going.

We dropped A off at the station in Inverness afterwards so he could train back to Wick and we had an overnight stay in Inverness, as we couldn't do the trip in one day because of ferry timings. I'd hoped to do some Vancouver clothes shopping in Inverness the next morning but it was too hot and I didn't feel up to it, so we went to a large garden centre just outside Inverness instead.. We were looking for rockery plants really, although we cast an eye over the patio furniture as well, and the OH saw a gadget 

which he had to have. Given how tedious it is to water pots, and we do have quite a lot of them now, I don't begrudge it to him. And we found a few alpines that we couldn't get in Orkney and that weren't purple or white. Nothing against purple or white, it's just that's what we have most of in there just now. 

On the way back, since we had plenty of time we stopped at Brora and ventured on to the beach there. 

It's very pretty and the photo doesn't really do it justice. Half an hour there listening to the sound of the waves was very restorative. 

Tomorrow we are off again for a very fleeting visit to Englandshire. We drive all the way to Wetherby, then on Saturday I spend the day with my Dorothy Dunnett group in Harrogate and return to  Glasgow, and on Sunday it's back to Orkney.After which we are staying put until 13th, which is like,  you know, days! 

In other news my article for the Prgaue University journal got finished, referenced and sent off a day early. I thought this well impressive but of course the Vancouver paper is a long way from being finalised, so I shall have to concentrate on that when we get back.