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.