The Falls of Shin were amazing, I bet the Sprites were having a great time in the water!

The weather has taken a turn so we gave up on an attempt to reach John O'Groats against the gales, and turned south passed the long Loch Shin and stopping at Lairg to sit out the bad weather. I managed to get some excellent pic's of common ink cap and the next day, some cobwebs holding the morning dew on the way to the Falls of Shin.

Rock pooling is great at Scourie, here's a sea potatoe shell and unfortunately a dead crab. We did a bit of karma litter picking, ridiculous what comes in with the tide each day :-(

Ended up at Scourie with this view from our camper window :-). We watched two seals flopping about in the water below, yay!

Travelled west to Lochinver for more fabulous views, including Suilven, then back up to Kylestrome, which was amazing too; looks like the Pyrenees in this weather. I wouldn't like to drive over the bridge in high winds in the camper though!

Ardvreck Castle

Ardvreck Castle on Loch Assynt, lovely and strangely the area was covered with silver weed - good for seeing into the 'otherworld' apparently when placed on the eyelids, if that doesn't work you can always stick it in your shoes as a foot reviver and refresher (which definitely does work)!

Sorry, it's actually yarrow that was used for seeing into the 'otherworld'! I've just read that silverweed was used as a crop - the roots a tasty parsnip flavoured potato substitute, or they were dried and ground to make porridge or bread. (Also medicinally applied as a compress for heartburn or hemorrhoids :-) They do still work for sweaty feet though!

Approaching Gairloch looking south. There's abrilliant cafe/bookshop at Gairloch!! We stopped at Ullapool, although we shouldn't have considering all the lovely stops that we had passed so far, but a well missed take away was calling. Alas, it was crap, so never an indian or chinese take away again!! Always disappointed, so worth waiting for a gauranteed good one or at least a restaurant.

Holiday - yippee!

Heading north and following the west coast in the most amazing weather was exactly what we needed to unwind. Photographs can never quite give you the full effect of course, but can give you a quite a good idea when the weather is this good!

Eilean Donan castle and the Beinn Eighe Nature Reserve (Britains first)!

National Park Walk

Eeek, we had to do a ranger walk for the National Park today at Ardgartan Campsite/Argyll Cabins, Arrochar. Lots of hard work learning a new area in a short space of time, but great fun and we met some lovely people. Our friend Lesley actually grew up there so her help was invaluable. Forest Holidays were showing various heads of the National Parks in Britain what we do as a company as a lot of our sites are in the National Parks. We had two nice ladies from The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park come on our walk, but most went on a hike up The Cobbler. The weather was drizzly but we still had fun, which included a game of 'Forest family Fortunes' under a bothy bag at lunch time.

This marks the climax of a very busy successful ranger season as we now have a few days off, yeh, to rest and re-energise. Just in time for the Celtic festival of Mabon, the Autumn Equinox - a time for celebrating the friuts of your labours literally and emotionally! We won 'Heroes of the month' for August too for all our hard work and good customer feedback for our walks and mountiain bike activities, so that was really lovely. The wine, chocolate and flowers were gorgeous.

We are really sad not to be able to work at Cobleland campsite anymore next season though, but pastures new are hopefully growing and we will visit our special friends and regular campers there a lot!

Strathyre's New Bug Hotel Opens

The new bug hotel at Strathyre Cabins has finally opened. Will, added the final bits of wood and my slate signs just in time for the cold weather.

There are still vacancies for the winter season, so bugs, climb this way!

Last of the River Racing

Will enjoys a splash on Loch Lubnaig, before doing our last raft race of the summer back at Cobleland.

The reining champion is of course Cameron's 'The Determinator', winning the last race and a total of four times this season. Cameron, was also our best and most loyal customer and was awarded with lots of prizes and a special gold certificate, one of only two given out. Roisin, our second best customer got the other one!

Here's Will's raft 'Wilson' after some finishing touches before putting him away for the winter. Luckily he didn't lose 'Wilson' the ping pong ball on the last race - the river was raging! Tom Hanks, the action man didn't have to cry then :'-(

Mushrooms and Toadstools

Mmm, toadstools you can't eat, mushrooms you can - but not all the time. If in doubt, leave it out. Here is my favourite picture of the season so far of a birch bolette covered in moss. The other is some Destroying Angel with some pesky mouse droppings on top, eek.

Fly Agaric

I love finding these and watching the different stages of their growth. The stories on this one are endless, it's the best one to talk about on our ranger walks.

Fungi Foray Time Again

It's that time of year when you feel sad that the days are getting shorter, but then feel better because all the fungi is popping out of the earth. Here's a Penny Bun, or Cep and some Panther Cap (I love the latin name aminita pantherina). One is poisonous though, the other is not.