Pies and Music

During the days at the weekend we went with Ian and Iris on a couple of outings. They already know the area well, but hadn’t been to the new visitor centre at Corrieshalloch Gorge so we went there and walked down to the bridge along the new path. We also visited Lochinver and walked along to the harbour and had lunch at An Cala before each choosing a pie from the pie shop for our dinner, which we ate later with mash and broccoli. On their last evening Ian attended a concert at the Macphail Centre which was for musicians only, so Iris, James and I went for drinks at the Argyle Hotel before wandering along to the Ceilidh Place. Our timing was perfect because we arrived there just before the crowd arrived from the Macphail Centre for that night’s session, and we nabbed a really good table at the side, from where we had a great view of all the action. I was speaking to a man called Pete McCallum because the night before he had sung an excellent song called “The Bothy Jazz Song” and I wanted to ask him who wrote it. It turned out that he had written it himself and when I told him that I had loved it he said “That deserves a hug!” and indeed gave me a big hug! We got to know quite a lot of the musicians by sight over the three evenings and chatted to some of them, they are a friendly group. We said our farewells to Ian and Iris on Monday as they set off to visit friends in Beauly.