Castle Stalker View in the rain

(Backblip)

I was surprised, on waking, to see a text from my friend Elspeth that she'd be arriving much earlier than I expected. However, she hadn't calculated how long it would really take her to cross over from Perthshire into mystical, miserable Argyll.

After another trip to the Co-op at Ballachulish, Tanya dropped me at Castle Stalker View cafe, near Appin, on the way to one of her sessions with young'uns at Benderloch. I got myself some tea and tried to admire the castle view, but could hardly see it! (In the summer of 1998, Tanya, her elder daughter, my mother and I went to an open day at the castle. It is/was owned by the Stewart family, but not the Stewarts of Appin. As an aside, our former landlord's father would have inherited it one day, had he not been assassinated in his post as governor of the Bahamas. Be that as it may, it was a rugged, romantic place to visit).

Elspeth rocked up at the cafe at about 3pm, and we had a late lunch, before going back to my sister Kate's at Appin. She and Elspeth and I were all contemporaries at school in the 1970s/80s, and Kate and Elspeth hadn't met since! Elspeth had some crazy stories about those days, as ever.
For dinner we went down to the Pier House at Port Appin (a beautiful harbour, well worth a visit or a short ferry ride to the Isle of Lismore.) We took Kate's daughter Jezzie, buy not Kate, who was working, sadly. I had the mussels, J had the cod and chips, E. Had the fish pie. We were duly appreciative, and went home for pudding, which was raspberries, and for talking long into the night.