Haddington & Aberfeldy

August 2015

Page 1 ◊ Page 2 ◊ Page 3 ◊ Page 4 ◊ Page 5 ◊ Page 6

Whilst she may no longer be a brave knight, she was still tackling some of the obstacle courses with mildly reckless abandon.

And did I mention slides?  I perhaps don't do so enough.

All this isn't to say that Gregory wasn't having a good time; he was.  He sat reasonably obediently on the bit seesaw...

...with his sister on the other side.

When you've paid your peacock money (or not), you may as well take advantage.  I probably should use the world 'plumage' round about now.  In fact, I just did, so I don't need to bother.

Once more unto the Scone Palace breach, dear friends.  This was one of those shots where you had to be lucky if you were to avoid capturing unwanted tourists in the picture.

In one of the gardens, there was much puzzling.  I didn't get too far in as pushing the pushchair over the grass was too much effort.

You only wonder why her trousers aren't pink, don't you.  She's never shy of a good pose, either.

Now this was a huge and unusually-shaped tree.  Nature, eh.  Just crazier than you can ever imagine.

As I had wandered on ahead from the girls, who were taking their time, I let Gregory loose.  And off he went.  At this point, he looked back as it to say something like "you don't need to look after me, you know".  Oh but we do, young man.

We headed over to the hedge maze, where Daisy helpfully pointed the entrance...

...and off she went, "navigating" her way round.  She actually did a really good job, as we made our way through the high-hedged maze which was actually quite disorienting.  Before long, the two of us has made our way through, leaving Lynne and Gregory still in there somewhere.  Ah well - the car would be lighter, I suppose.

Daisy was keen to go back in, to "rescue" the missing family members, but we weren't quite as successful second time round.  We did notice that there was a bridge that you could go on, in order to partially cheat.  It did highlight the very well-coiffured nature of the maze.

With that help, we did all manage to (eventually) get out of the Murray Star Maze.

Daisy had it all under control at all times, and pointed with the confidence of one who did.

That was all quite a lot of hard work, though, so we all had a good sit down and some snackage.  We deserved it.  Especially Daisy, 'cos she did the maze too.  (I did too, but that's not worth mentioning here.)

Lynne and Daisy headed back to the castle for a pit stop, whilst Gregory and I made our way back round more slowly.  I again let him have a good run around (always a good idea with children when the idea is that they sleep on the drive home).  Here, Gregory and Daisy gaze across yards of lovingly-cut grass.

I carried Gregory back to the car, which enabled a lazy Daisy to roll back the years and be escorted in the pushchair.

Back home, we chilled and admired the view...

...before heading down into the village to an Italian restaurant that we had not tried before (and even Nicky had only gotten take-out from - we are such adventurous trendsetters).

We couldn't really move away from the prospect of ordering pizzas, with pesto gnocchi for the boy, who was eventually persuaded to consume some.

Something strange was happening that night; something very strange indeed.  As the ominous clouds rolled over, glowing with evil intent, we could only wonder at what the powers of nature had in store for us.

But in the meantime, we broke out the After Eight mints for our dessert.  We had decided not to stick around in the restaurant for our afters, instead stopping by the Co-op for some much-needed (i.e. I had run out or was running very low) beers, as well as this dinner table delicacy.

I mean, does it get any better?  I think not.

With Gregory getting ever more physical, he did occasionally threaten to overpower Daisy.  However, his big sister is still nearly twice the weight and probably 50% taller, so such things would never persist.  When they are older, it might be a very different story.  But I'll be sure to tell it, if they'll sign the consent forms.

There's one thing that is unchanging in Britain, and that is the changeability of the weather.  A little before 8am, there were clouds and some hanging mist around the hills.

Two hours later, the weather was absolutely ruddy glorious.

We decided to take it easy this morning, heading to Aberfeldy park.  I am so excited, I can barely mention that Daisy was on the slide.  For extra points, she decided to go down head first.  This may or may not have been wise.

She then tried a more daring ascent later on, although I'm not sure she made it all the way to the top since it seems to get steeper the further up you go.

The blond boy wonder, also the self-proclaimed best brother in the world (even if he does say so himself), looked on with a small slice of awe.  Yeah, so Daisy on the slide and Gregory in the swing is getting a bit repetitive.  I'm not forcing you to read these pages.  Anyway, this is reasonably representative of what they get up to.

With mysterious forces at play in the mind of our angst-ridden four-year old girl, we soon had some sort of Mexican sulk-off between her and her brother, although I think Gregory was just seeing what sitting down on the path felt like, rather than any gesture of petulance (it won't take him long to develop such "skills").

Daisy later did some more sitting on a different bit of grass, but in a better mood than above.

Developing an ability to walk has rather skewed the risk equation for Gregory as this enables him to reach places which are more dangerous than the more coddled confines of 'crawldom', but with this very concept beyond the scope of his cognitive function.  Thus we can see him here, escaping up the pathway to the nearby road, fearsomely curious but without an obvious care in the world.

I vaguely recall us being a bit uncertain of a plan for the afternoon, or indeed lunch, but decided that both were best served by revisiting the Stewart Tower Dairy Farm, where the previous year Daisy threw a wobbler and got left in the car for a five or ten minutes to calm down.  This year was much calmer, thankfully.

We got there in good time, just after noon, thus beating the inevitable rush.  Gregory, after a sleep in the car, was clearly hungry enough to eat his own hand.  In the background is a big part of the reason for coming - a plentiful selection of ice-creams.

While we waited for the food, the girls milled around the shop, a sort of gift shop meets delicatessen, to see what was on offer.  The longer we stayed there, the busier it became, until they started to queue for a table.

After lunch and ice-creams, Daisy and I headed out first to see what was what in the world of farming.

This horse (probably) was all mane and no legs...

...whilst Mr White the goat was king of all he surveyed from atop his pile of rocks.

It was pleasantly warm, certainly for these spotted pigs...

...and very possibly for these ladies in pink, chatting away about all and sundry.

On to page six or back to the Secret Portal.