Haddington & Aberfeldy

August 2015

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We start with another pair of, er, creatures, as these two little goats kiss or square up or maybe a mixture of the two.

Gregory went for a wander past the car park to the other side of the farm, so I had somewhat of a duty to follow.  It did at least give me another view to capture.

One of the poor goats goat his head stuck - the price for curiosity, or stupidity perhaps.  This wasn't particularly helped by one of his mates/siblings/colleagues barging him from the side.  Daisy fetched some popcorn and set up her stall nearby to watch, until eventually a farmer came out to free the little blighter from his temporary prison.

A little like with a magnet and iron filings, something had all these geese or ducks facing the same way.

We decided not to head anywhere else in that neck of the woods, instead making our way back to the farm by mid-afternoon, in search of some relatives.  We had dropped Gregory and Lynne off first, and we waited patiently out in the sunshine, round the back of Spirit of Wood.

That patience was rather broken by an urge of nature, so Daisy and I headed inside to use the facilities (well, Daisy did) and I gave her a tour of the shop.

Back outside again, Daisy confronted this mound of feed (or something), almost daring herself to have a go at running up it.

I nipped into the garden for a cheeky shot.  Not a bad view.

Nor is this.  Another lovely day of weather.

It turned out the various McDiarmids were on various errands or somesuch, but they later popped round to see us.  The boys were enjoying playing football together.

Gregory the dwarf was clearly comfortable in the presence of a giant.

We ordered a curry for everyone (except Nicky who had to get back for some hosting or other, although she still got some leftovers) then the three of us headed out for some sheep herding action, in the little jeep.

The sun was bursting its way through the clouds as we did so.

We swept back and forth across the field, with the dog in tow, spending most of persuading some of the older or less fit sheep to go where we wanted them to go.  Daisy labelled them granny sheep.

Eventually the job was all done, with the sheep all in the next field along, and the dog very pleased with himself.  It was not a moment too soon as I had a curry to go and collect, although predictably (I had been warned) it wasn't ready when I got there.

We gave Gregory one last run around in the evening sunshine before bedtime.

And then I headed out for some mountain biking action before the sun went down.  This was from the walk up to the farm.  Having partly helped out with the always-stressful task of putting the children to bed, I was running a bit late and was intercepted midway by Calum in the jeep, thankfully speeding the process up.

We headed up to Loch Kennard (see the route here) and back on mountain bikes, taking a long, steady uphill path on the ascent  Calum wasn't too far behind given he hadn't really been out on the bike much recently (I had been cycling into work regularly and Eddie just never stops).

...where we posed by the loch for a cheesy photo.

We then headed back down, taking a diversion along some very puddly, muddy tracks which had a couple of hilarious moments of both me and Eddie, at different points, abandoning our bikes rather than follow them into the ditch in comical fashion.

On the next and last full day, Friday, we took a longer trip to the Dundee Science Centre.  It being the summer holidays, it was pretty busy with children, but we persevered on what was somewhat of a drizzly day (although only really when we got there).

This rather grotesque feature enabled you to crawl in through the mouth, climb up the nasal cavity, and slide down out of the nostril.  Daisy did it a couple of times (it was a slide after all) but wasn't amazingly keen.

When we stopped for lunch, we had the rather cute feature of a mock bunsen burner for out temporary table number.

Daisy on the decks, spinning out some tunes.

More another time.  Nearly there now, I promise.

Back to the story of our Scotland trip and, since almost completing this pages then forgetting for a while (although to be fair, I have been updating Gregory's pages in the meantime), I have obtained photos taken by Lynne on her camera.  A small number of these have been interspersed throughout the pages, and some of the rest are below.  In fact, here is one now, depicting Daisy and I on the decks together.  It was basically a sound effects machine.

Another game required you to press the pads when the lights came on.  I had some assistance for this particular attempt.  It doesn't look like we're doing very well, though.  I can only presume that I've just pressed the lit pad and the new one has just lit up.  Rather than, y'know, me looking really slow.

Gregory looked on as Lynne had a go on one of the annoying robots.

Then he looked very happy as he had a computer all to himself.  He would no doubt try to activate Siri, since that is all he seems to do with my iPhone.

We took Daisy (and Gregory, but he just sat in the pram) to some sort of performance or show where the children had to sit on the seats of an imaginary bus and drive to imaginary locations to carry out fun tasks.  Daisy was very keen to get as close to the front of the bus each time so it turned into some kind of frenzied, emotional version of musical chairs.

Rather frighteningly, the science centre had a cloning station.

One of the features in the sound area were a series of microphones which, if you sang into them, it distorted your voice when you listened through the headphones.  Daisy, however, wasn't particularly interested in this concept and instead spent probably twenty minutes (if not, more) singing random things into the microphone.  She was in her own world.

After patiently waiting for a considerable time while a couple of children played on this very physical instrument, Daisy eventually had a go, but it was quite tricky to play the notes at sufficient speed to make it sound like the song it was meant to be.

We got caught in a bit of traffic on the way back, which made the journey a little longer than planned.  By the time we got close to Aberfeldy, it was almost 5pm, coincidentally the time that the Logierait Inn opened.  We messed around on some nearby grass for a short while and then headed on in there, unsurprisingly some of the first customers of the evening.

Daisy gave a thumb up for her meal, which isn't the goat's cheese fritter that sits between us (I had ordered that as a starter alongside the main - with children, you don't get time for a full three-course meal and I couldn't resist ordering it), but is probably cheesy pasta, since that is one of her favourites.  Gregory is (sort of) tucking into fish and chips.

Of course, even more favourite than cheesy pasta for main course is an ice-cream based dessert .

Lynne and I had, in reverse respective order, chocolate profiteroles and waffles.

The day had taken it out of the wee ones as they shared an armchair and (probably) watched some evening television.

The next day, during a cloudy morning, we packed and meandered around (or rather, Lynne packed while the children and I meandered around).

Gregory entertained us with his best Shakin' Stevens impression, although I was most struck by the short focus the iPhone has seemingly done of its own accord here.

I took the first driving stint and managed to make it a monster, getting all the way down to Westmorland Tebay motorway services, which was a 190-mile, just-over-three-hour drive, leaving a more manageable 100-mile journey for Lynne to complete.  We got a good seat by the duck pond, which Daisy was happy with.

Given they had been stuck in a car for so long (although they were asleep for some of that), we let them have a good run around in the soft play area.  Gregory enjoyed climbing up one side of this and trying to slide down the other, although he needed a little help.

All in all, a very enjoyable holiday.

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