Of hikes, holidays and my best moonshot ever ...

Despite our very late night last night, we were up again with reasonable expedition this morning - much more so than the girls, who proved hard to rouse. Must be all this sea air (except that they live beside the Firth of Forth). Eventually we organised ourselves to fit in with their father's timetable and Anna and I headed down the road to meet Ewan and Morgane in Bookpoint, the local independent bookshop where they bought half a dozen books between them. Meanwhile Himself and Catriona had a brief discussion about an essay she has to write for A-level music.

That done, I went with the family to climb up Puck's Glen, the magical post-glacial gorge that rises above the old road on the way to Benmore. I've not been up it for a couple of years, mainly because of Himself's knee, and realised my own knees have done something silly recently as they were creaking alarmingly (and painfully) every time they had to weight-bear while bent at all. However, it was as fantastically unlikely as ever, all mossy rocks, towering cliffs and waterfalls, beside which the path snakes and climbs and takes you over rustic bridges and up slippery stone steps. I've chosen the photo above to show some of these features as well as the family, who appear all together here simply because there was a more open pool here. We came down through the woods above the gorge, back to the car park below, as the rain came and went and the golden leaves sifted gently off the few deciduous trees. 

Lunch in the Blairmore Café followed - Himself drove there to meet us - by request of the girls, who remember all these places with the intensity of ritual. It's a lovely place, owned and run by a mother/daughter combo, with the friendliest of welcomes and some very enjoyable food. We had cake to finish ...

And then back to the house, a frenzy of packing, of checking for abandoned items - socks, necklaces, phones, laptop cases, water bottles - and they were off. I hate goodbyes. Somehow, to console myself while the first load of washing was doing its thing in the machine, I booked a holiday. It's exactly the same as one we had almost two years ago - a week in a secluded hotel in Funchal, where there is posh dining if you want it and a local restaurant down the road if you don't and a tropical garden through which you wander to breakfast. And then I found that our friends whose company we so enjoyed the last time will be staying nearby, so that was good too. 

The last excellent thing about today was my best effort ever at shooting the moon over the Firth. It wasn't till later I realised it was a superman; I just looked out and saw it and tried doing what I'd seen in an ad on Facebook about getting the best out of your iPhone. Reader, it worked. It's my extra for today.