Tuesday Travels

It’s just after 0700 and I am leaving the Stornoway harbour on MV Isle of Lewis. There are some really dark clouds lurking over The Minch as we plough our way through the remains of the swell caused by the weekend’s gales. As crossings of The Minch go this is quite calm. I like the MV Isle of Lewis. It is coming to the end of its 20 year active life with Caledonian Macbrayne and will be the second vessel I have seen on the route. The first, MV Suilven, left the company’s service around 1994 and, ironically, went to New Zealand where it plied the Cooke Straight as a cattle boat before going to Fiji where it was eventually scrapped. 

I’ve had my compulsory bacon roll. I have no idea what it is but for the last 40 years even when I was a non-meat-eater I’ve always had a bacon roll when doing the early morning Minch crossing. It comes somewhere between habit and ritual. It’s not quite an addiction. 

I’m off to the Mainland to see my brother, CJ aka Scriptor Senex, and his family and to visit friends. I am meeting up with Anna in Pitlochry around lunchtime and then we will drive down together to her house near Glasgow where I’ll be staying for a few days. 

After spending so much time in the garden this summer I left with some trepidation because the weather over the weekend was very wet with gale force winds but it was also quite warm by our standards. As a result the weeds have had a field day and I rather dread to think what will meet me when I return in about three weeks. 

I imagine that I will have lots to blog about during the next three weeks and I hope that I manage not to lose touch with my Blogland friends during that time.

This evening:

We had a very enjoyable trip from Pitlochry to Anna's via Crief (looking very sad these days with closed shops) and Muthill (where the whole village is bedecked with flowers).  This was one of the floral decorations:

How wonderfully cheerful is that?  How could you feel sad with that in the village?