Up North

Squirrel was up twice during the night being sick and ended up in bed with us.
For such a wee person she takes up an awful lot of bed!

Collected the hire car for the trip up north and bought some supplies.  After lunch the monsters went off on an organised "mini beast hunt" in the local woods and I went off to collect Bags and the son-in-law from the airport.
What a nightmare that was. More for them than me. The plane landed on time and it took nearly two hours to get them off the plane, bused to the terminal (long wait on bus), through passport control (huge queues even to get into the terminal) and chaos at baggage reclaim. Meanwhile, there was traffic chaos all round the area due to the huge "Cycle For Scotland" event and the hold-ups at the pick-up area due to the delays inside the terminal. I sat in the car at the Park & ride! (apart from when I left to go and get a coffee and change should I need to try and get to the pick-up point). Eventually my passengers walked up to meet me.

So I was late in getting away. That delay was then compounded with the usual huge delays to get across the bridge at South Queensferry and then the miles of cones without a  worker or works vehicle in sight at various points up the road and the drivers doing between 40mph & 45mph in the 60mph zones.
It took me over 4 hours to get to Inverness which meant after I had grabbed a bite to eat and had a stretch I had the last 100 miles (much of it single track road) to do in the failing light which rapidly turned into pitch dark and ultimately with rain. 
Not helped by the venison that kept appearing in the road!
But I eventually got to the cottage in Balchrick - just in time for Mr Grumpy making a cup of tea which I followed with a whisky - or two.

Lots of good chat and laughter before heading to bed................. Yawn!