The Flight Home

Flying home yesterday the weather was beautiful so the Captain decided to fly lower than usual over Loch Lomond and some of the Highlands before climbing to the usual cruising height. I have got so used to flying over the Highlands that I often don't even look out of the window except when I know that Lewis will be visible and I can feel the emotion of homecoming. But it was very satisfying looking down over the Loch where I had walked a few days ago and then over Ben Lomond which, as I mentioned in a recent posting, I last climbed with Gaz a few years ago. I may have got used to the experience but I never tire of the awesome beauty of nature.

Dead Bagpipe

Walking along the banks of Loch Lomond on Tuesday I looked down and, lo and behold, down on the shoreline was a dead bagpipe. R I P.

Lunch at Duck Bay

I was reminded by one of Heather's recent beautiful postings Papa's Little Bunny of the Song of Hiawatha by Longfellow. A beautiful poem and one I have always liked and admired. One of the verses is:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

Today friends took me to the banks of Loch Lomond, about which the verse could have been written, where we had lunch at the Duck Bay Marina Hotel where I had, not that long ago, attended the wedding of their daughter. After lunch we walked for a short while along the Loch. I can not believe that it is only a few years since Gaz and I walked up Ben Lomond on the other side of the Loch. It was, I think, the last Munro that I climbed.