The Secret of our Successful Marriage

Our holiday with Heather and Ewan has continued with more walking, relaxing, dining and music.

As forecast, Wednesday was a rainy day, so as well as a walk around the village we spent an afternoon of reading and chatting in front of the fire in the living room. Except James, who had to go for rather a long drive to pick up a part for our broken car - I will save the details of this for a future blog post when hopefully our ongoing car saga will have had a happy ending. James was back in time for a slap up dinner of Lochinver pies with chips, gravy and baked beans, followed by a convivial evening. 

Thursday was grey but dry and we drove south, past Dundonnell, to go for a 10 km walk to and from Slaggan Bay. It was a lovely walk past a couple of lochans, through a lush green valley and down to an attractive sandy beach. As we enjoyed our coffee and shortbread, we could see the Shiant islands in the distance with the very faint outline of Harris beyond them. In the evening we had a tasty dinner at the Arch Inn where the service was extremely speedy after the slow service last week - seems like someone has had a word with the staff! It meant that we had time for dessert which was delicious but of course made me very full! 

And today we went for a boat ride on the Shearwater out to the Summer Isles. We were lucky enough to see a pod of dolphins again, dozens of them leaping about in the water. There was a friendly and talkative tourist sitting near us who got chatting to James about the different seabirds, which led James to tell him, “I have difficulty telling the difference between a shag and a cormorant!” Without missing a beat, Ewan commented, “And that’s the secret of your successful marriage!” Well, that just cracked me up which set Ewan off and soon we were helpless with laughter. Heather was laughing too and said, “I can’t take you two anywhere!” which added to our mirth. 

Later James planted some heathers in the garden while Ewan made a fantastic dinner of pasta with pesto, mushrooms and artichoke hearts. It wasn’t until we went out later to watch the sun set that I realised that Heather had been gardening too; she had very kindly done some weeding down by the gate. Such excellent guests - cooking and gardening!