(view from the walk on the Cairngorm Mountains)The Accommodation :
Four Bedrooms, three bathrooms, two living rooms (utility room, kitchen and dining area), perfect for five gals and four guys and no arguments over what to watch every night. The house was pleasant, a little old fashioned and the family photos were a little freaky but each to their own. It's was a great size for all of us to fit into.
Oh and it had plenty of books (which meant myself and Lau were very happy). No matter that I'd went armed with 'North and South' and 'The Forgotten Garden' and bought five books whilst I was away. I still managed to find myself a book to read from the shelves, though I didn't get it finished and now must make a trip to the library to get it and find out what happens to Moll and Alfie, but I digress.
Also, and this had us all rather bemused, the place was filled with packs of playing cards, at least seven or eight which we kept finding in drawers or on shelves. As you can imagine, time was filled in by playing various cards games, from numerous amounts of patience games, to more fun stuff like 'Go Fish' and one which became a favourite, two or three pack snap (each person gets a pack of cards and the race is one to win all of them). None of us ever seemed to be in the mood to play more serious games such as black jack, poker etc etc. Though Lau and I were wanting to learn to rules of 'Whist'. You see, being fans of the classics we figures because they were always playing games of 'Whist' whilst having a good gossip we should at least learn the rules and understand what's going on. Unfortunately nobody else seemed interested in learning (and reading through the rules it all seemed a little confusing), the argument of telling people that everyone from 'Lizzie Bennet' to 'Hornblower' played Whist didn't really assuage them to our cause, so we have been left still wondering how Whist is played.
The Cairngorms:
(Me on the left, with little sis Jess) The second day graced us with some delightful weather. Considering in the last few months we've seen little of the sunshine and more often than not drowned like rats by varying degrees of downpour, we were up for getting out and enjoying the weather, so up the mountains we went. Driving of course, none of us are of the 'Mountaineering' kind. I love going up the 'Cairn', the scenery is beautiful up there and they have some nice walks to toddle around. It was an extremely clear day and we could see for miles, down over Aviemore where we stayed just outside of as well as Loch Insch where you can go and do a lot of different watersports. After a walk in beautiful sunshine, (we didn't even need our coats or scarves like we usually do) we had a quick cuppa in the cafe there.
(view from the Cairngorm Mountains)Seeing as the weather seemed to be sticking around, we decided on Canoeing for the afternoon.
Canoeing: The lads had done canoeing before, but for us gals, it was anew experience. This was evident when we manned our boats and went where no twenty eight year old mature ladies have gone before, round and round in circles in the middle of the Loch in absolute hysterics. I've not laughed so hard or so much in a loooong time. If I wasn't laughing then Rache was or vice versa so we couldn't get very far very quickly. Jess and Liz seemed to be in the same predicament. Eventually when we stopped going in circles, we end up in a zig zag motion. The lads sort of gave up on us and went on their merry way whilst we muddled about on a quiet part of the river leading off from the Loch. I pondered on how the children of adventure stories from my childhood really did so well with such an activity. If Julian, Dick, Anne and George could man a boat, then by golly so could we. Such determination didn't make us go in a straight line but we did have a laugh about it.
It wasn't until the nearing of the end of the hour when we started back for the beach to moor the canoes that Rache and I got into a rhythm and started moving in a straight line. Unfortunately it was whilst we rowed backwards, so not only were we dissolved into fits of giggles but we couldn't even see where we were going because we were rowing backwards and extremely tired from it. Still, it was the greatest fun and I am sooo going canoeing again! And at least we stayed dry and didn't topple the canoe over!
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