The Scottish Highlands
New Year 2004-5

  Once again, we headed north to Scotland for New Year, to take a turn looking after the various dogs, cats, rats and goldfish which make up the zoo at Strathmashie, whilst Mark, Pat and the family headed for Barbados to cruise away the winter weather blues for a couple of weeks. The drive up was wet and windy, snow was strangely absent for a change. During the week we spent at Strathmashie, it snowed and then rained to wash the snow away again several times, very unusual weather indeed, it never even got really cold. The dogs mostly behaved themselves, apart from the occasional bit of hiding when it was snowing and it was bed time, the rest of the animals were trouble free.

  Merlin the Pyrennean Mountain dog seems happy to play with a teddy bear these days, what else would you expect from a 2 year old? Try taking it away from him and he's rather less like a 2 year old, particularly if he stands up. Gael on the other hand is a small and very bouncy collie, with far too much energy for a normal human to put up with. This makes her the perfect partner for long training runs with Pat. She, Gael that is, also had a bad habit of hiding when it was time to come into the house, and just loved chasing the cats. Sheep dog instincts made her great at rounding them up, although we never found out why she wanted them rounded up.

  Frosty morning and sunshine across Black Wood, a great combination and the only day when we had any really good weather at all.

  It was a very cold and frosty morning after a clear night. As the clouds cleared it actually became quite warm in the sunshine, but to start with it was frosty as far as the eye could see. This is the view across the Mashie river towards theh Nevis Range.

  We just had to take advantage of the great weather, so we drove a couple of miles to the forest car park and walked up Black Wood, getting great views across the valley to Laggan and Strathmashie and the surrounding hills. The panorama at the top of this page was taken near the top. Here, we have a close up of the trees and mossy bank, colours were really vivid in the sunlight. A great selection of colours in the trees, embankment and grass as we walked further up the frozen track.

  The walk up through Black Wood gives some greatv views, here sunlight across the fells towards Ben Allder, just before the clouds closed in and it became cold as well and quite dark for mid day.Farther up the track, there's a great view of Laggan from the top of Black Wood, or Black Crag as it's also called on the maps.

  A moody silhouette shot of Dave P, at the top of Black Wood, and a somewhat less moody shot of Karen.

  Mid day moon over one of the Strathmashie pine trees which didn't get blown down in the high winds.

  10 minutes further down the hill and this stuff is coming out of the taps at Strathmashie. Cold, clear, fresh and natural, the only way to get your water really.

  'Now then son, don't go pushing your mother into the stream'. Less than 12 hours after returning from a Barbados cruise, Pat's got her arm in the near freezing filters for the drinking water. George's only excuse for being there was that he just likes to get wet, Mark as usual directed operations whilst Rose and Merlin watched, unenthusiastically.

New Year 2003/04	Christmas 2006

Pictures and text are copyright © Dave & Karen Petty- All Rights Reserved, please don't copy anything without our permission. Thanks, D & K.