What we did at the weekend

Grandson decided to make a shop. He kept careful accounts of his takings. His shop was situated in the kitchen doorway, which was slightly inconvenient, but his parents didn't seem to mind.

We went away for the weekend with our walking group to Lagganlia, near Kingussie. The countryside is quite hilly, but we trudged uncomplainingly... well, fairly uncomplainingly... up and down the slopes.

The heather was nearly in full bloom.

We did occasionally pause to admire the views

or eat blaeberries, the Scottish wild blueberry. That's not blood on my hand; it's blaeberry juice.

Ever upwards. Well, and downwards.

George, our minor celebrity / plant expert, told us the name of this toadstool. I think it was Fly Agaric.

He also told us the names of these native heathers. One is Calluna Vulgaris and the other is Erica Something.

This cow was particularly friendly. (I don't know why Blogger won't allow me to enlarge the photos today.)

On the second day, the walk was even hillier and somewhat muddy. The more limber of our group climbed down to these rocks beside a waterfall. I decided that I valued my ankles.

We came to this rock near Newtonmore, which claims to be the centre of Scotland. This is very much debated (Scotland has many, many islands, which make the calculation difficult). However, it seemed worthy of a picture.

More heather.

Shortly after this photo, when we were all congratulating ourselves on the lovely weather we'd had - not too hot, not too much wind, no rain - it began to POUR. So for the last half hour we didn't take so many photos but just plodded on, dripping, along/up/down paths turned to mud. Then we got back into our cars and in about two minutes, drove out of the deluge into dry roads and sunshine. Scottish weather at its most varied.

It was a lovely weekend: good exercise, good company, lots of laughs and quite a lot of food.