Contrasts

Rather a different sort of day. We’d planned a surprise trip to Gleneagles for afternoon tea to mark V’s retirement last summer but the day before we were due to go they stopped doing them due to staff shortages from Covid and it’s taken till now for it all to restart.
Had a nice chat with Mt&H who are thinking that Mt will bring the wee ones up here at half term to let H do her revision for exams….that will be fantastic but will need a bit of juggling around of diaries etc….
V arrived and we set off on our adventure, collecting T en route and for the last 5 miles putting a blindfold on V so she didn’t know where we were going. She was pretty surprised when we pulled up outside the hotel!
Although it had started warm and sunny, not long after we arrived the drizzle started, despite it staying relatively warm. We waited til A arrived then went for a walk around outside despite the drizzle….we could have played croquet and had a coffee from the little French van in the grounds if it hadn’t been wet, but we were not stopping anything spoiling our fun so returned inside to look around the diamond and cashmere shops and then have a wee cocktail in the bar before afternoon tea. The photo here is from the dessert stage….we’d already munched through similarly huge stacks of savouries and were downing pot after pot of delicious teas, chatting non stop all the while. After nearly three hours they said they needed to clear the room for a function but apologised for moving us on and offered a free round of drinks in the bar to compensate….very nice!
After more chat we headed home…lovely day. But that wasn’t all. I’d bought tickets to go and see the Beltane spring celebrations on Carlton Hill (extra) but unfortunately it was still raining. Nevertheless A and I marched down and spent nearly two hours watching something incomprehensible with fire (although no fireworks unfortunately), chanting hoarders of red and white costumed people reenacting something only they understood. A had a bratwurst and it was an experience and quite dramatic/funny but would have been a lot better without the rain and if we’d had some clearer sense of what was happening!
Home and flopped into bed late…action packed day!