June 12, Thursday

On the road back to Nethy Bridge from Edinburgh this morning, we stopped at the The Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Loch of the Lowes Wildlife Reserve.  It’s not really for tourists but rather a scientific research station that allows people to come in and very respectfully get a peek at ospreys and other wildlife in their natural habitat.

The have hides set up (these brown buildings) with high-powered telescopes for use in watching the animals across the lake.

What Josie would look like as a scientist.

They have an HD camera aimed at the osprey nest which is broadcasting to a TV in the main building and in the hides.  This female is sitting on a clutch of eggs, but a scientist told us a crow damaged her eggs several weeks ago and sadly there is no chance of them hatching.  She’s been on them for 60 days now … not giving up, but way past the point where any chicks would have hatched if the eggs were good.

An old osprey nest was salvaged and placed where visitors can see it up close.  They are huge.

Our cabin in Nethy Bridge (name of the town) is the best place we’ve stayed so far.  The cottage has been recently renovated inside so it’s sparkling clean and everything works.  It has a fabulous washer/dryer set, so I’ve been doing laundry like there is no tomorrow.  No having to hang it outside or battle spiders in a dilapidated shack to use an ancient dryer!

The cabin is out in the woods by a little creek.  The property is beautiful and full of wildlife.    If you’ve ever had a fantasy of going to live in a cabin in the woods like a hermit, this is the place for you.  It’s peaceful and relaxing … a soul-nourishing kind of place.

The garden is fantastic.  You wouldn’t know from the photo, but the kids are hyperactive and thrilled. They’ve spent all afternoon running around, playing tag, playing in the creek and blowing off some steam.  Right now they are taking a break to eat candy.

Down the hill is the creek.  The name of the creek is “Caochan Fhuarain” and empties into the River Spey about 5 miles away.

Tonight we had what we’re calling a “Skyrim dinner.”  We even ate it outside.

We stopped at House of Bruar again on our way back from Edinburgh and hit their gourmet grocery store.  We bought strawberries and raspberries that had been picked just that morning, a wedge of cheese, some Hedgehog bread, olives, smoked venison, roasted pecans, raw Heather honey, and some quails’ eggs.  We haven’t eaten the eggs yet, but everything else got devoured for dinner.  Most of those items are food in the Skyrim game (in some form or another) and eating them outside next to a creek in the woods with our hands made us all feel like we were living in the past as envisioned by Bethesda.  The kids have absolutely come alive.  This place has great wifi and access to Netflix, yet they are choosing to run around like wild monkeys outside.  Absolute perfection.

June 13, Friday

This cabin is so comfortable and peaceful that we couldn’t work up any interest in leaving for the day to do activities.  We did need to make a trip to the grocery store, which was met with complaints and moaning from the kids because yesterday we promised that we’d just stay in all day.  They considered a short trip to get food reneging on the promise.

We spent the entire day playing outside, watching Netflix movies, eating fruit and cheese, and wandering around the rural neighborhood.  A fuzzy black cat showed up to play with the kids and they named it Snowball.  A little while later, another fuzzy grey cat showed up … Snowball II.  The two cats look like siblings and have identical collars, so we assume they belong to the same household.  It didn’t stop them from fighting, though.  Snowball II is a real jerk.

Around 3:00 in the afternoon, it started raining pretty hard and we heard some loud meowing outside the kitchen door.  Snowball I was huddled under the Land Rover with a struggling, eviscerated shrew.  It was pretty gruesome.  I shut the door, but the kitty came to the doorstep wanting in.  I opened up and Snowball walked right in like she owned the place.  She parked herself in front of the fireplace and started to lick herself dry.

I went outside in the pouring rain to stomp on the shrew (to put it out of it’s misery) but it was gone … I don’t know if she swallowed it whole or what.  No matter though … she’s curled up on my lap now and purring contentedly.  Adam built a fire in the wood stove and the front room is warm and cozy.  We’re watching Orange is the New Black, I have a snuggly kitty on my lap, a mug of hot tea, and life is perfect.  I may never leave this place.  (I’m hoping really hard that cats in Scotland don’t have fleas or intestinal worms.)  Today is Friday the 13th with a full moon, and a strange black cat is on my lap … lucky day?  (Not for the poor shrew.)

Maybe tomorrow we’ll muster up the gumption to leave the house.

June 14, Saturday

Today, after a very leisurely morning, we decided to drive to the nearby town of Aviemore.  They have some coffee shops and a grocery store, and some hiking trails.

When Adam went outside to start the car, the windshield wipers came on and wouldn’t turn off.  This is the second problem we’ve had with the Land Rover since we got here; in Inverness, the driver’s side door suddenly couldn’t be opened from the outside.  Adam spent an hour in a mechanic’s shop getting that fixed.  Now the windshield wipers are going like gangbusters and won’t stop.

My feelings about the car are sliding from resigned tolerance into outright loathing and fear. It’s a rattling, unreliable death trap (so says me.)

I’ve seen enough episodes of Top Gear to know that men form intense attachments to cars, and the more decrepit the cars are, the more affection and protective loving care is poured into them.  I guess I can sort of understand the instinct; when I was a little girl choosing pets, I faithfully picked the injured, sickly, runty, mentally challenged animal every single time.  I loved them because I feared nobody else would.  They needed me.  Maybe it’s kind of like that with men and these buckets of bolts.  I do not feel this way about cars; the second they become unreliable, I’m ready to salvage any recyclable materials off them and gleefully toss the rest into the crusher.  Good riddance to bad rubbish.

We stopped at a coffee shop that had free wifi and Adam spent some time finding a local mechanic.  When we got to the shop, he was told the mechanic was out of town for several days, but what Adam should do is just pull the fuse to the windshield wipers.  We drove back to the cabin before he started messing around under the hood, on the off chance that pulling the wiper fuse somehow resulted in the car refusing to start (my worry, although Adam assures me those two systems have nothing to do with each other — like pulling a splinter out of your finger can’t give you diarrhea.) He humored me anyway.

Adam managed to get the wipers switched off, but now if it starts raining we’ll have to pull over and put the fuse back in if we want to be able to see.

On a brighter note, when we got back to the cabin Snowball was waiting for us by the kitchen door.  Yay!  We let her in and fed her a little bit of ham and a quail’s egg that I accidentally dropped in the garbage when I was making breakfast earlier this morning.  She is a really great kitty.

It stopped raining around 11:30 so we took the kids for a walk down by the river.  Adam and I felt it was a hike to enjoy the majesty of the wilderness, but the kids felt it was more of a forced march.  They wanted to stay in the yard and play Capture the Flag, but they can do that at home:  they can’t hike through the Scottish woods at home.  When we got back, Snowball was still sleeping on Isabella’s bed.  Yay again!

Hiking here is wonderful, if it’s not raining.  Getting wet is definitely a risk.  However, the temperatures are comfortably cool and the landscape is lush, green, and smells fresh and clean.  You can go for several miles without getting all gross and sweaty.  It’s perfect.

Nethy Bridge Hotel on the left – built in the late 1800’s. It’s still open, but a bit tired and need of some renovation. In it’s prime, it was a popular destination and hosted guests like Mae West and Cary Grant – people who wanted to get away for a week or more in the Scottish Highlands.

The kids spent the rest of the afternoon playing outside, and I spent the afternoon doing a few chores with Snowball following me around.  By “following me around” I mean that she tailed me into the kitchen hoping for food, and spent the rest of the time laying next to me on the couch while I watched Netflix and poked around on the computer (aka “chores.”)

Tomorrow we have to leave this spectacular cabin and go to a house on the water (Loch Long) a little southwest from here.  It has a hot tub, which sounded awesome on the website when we were searching for a place to reserve last week, but I’m pretty sure they won’t have a kitty.  The kids and I are going to have a hard time leaving our vacation pet.

Update:  maybe a little easier to leave Snowball now … at 4:00 a.m. she decided she wanted to be fed and hopped up in our bed to screech “meeeeeeooooowwww” in my ear and pat at my face with her paw.  I kicked her out of the room, so she went into Holden and Josie’s room to meow at them instead.  We don’t have any cat food and she wouldn’t stop making noise, so we shut her in the kitchen (with the kitty door) and she left.