Grrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

You can tell Maddy's in the holiday spirit for two reasons...

1. She's got a bit of colour about her face.

2. She's let me take a photo where she's not flipping me the bird.

This photo does make me think of a song though.

Last full day in Durness today and it's the long journey home tomorrow. It was a fairly eventful day though. First we headed to Ceannabeinne Beach for a bit then it was on to Lotte Glob's sculpture croft as she'd opened it up for a fifty year retrospective of her work, wish we could afford to buy some.

After that it was back to Cocoa Mountain for a last chocolate fix of the week, which Roz's mum treated us to.

Next was my brush with death* for the day. Roz and I headed to Faraid head and walked up the other side to see the Puffins. There's a really steep narrow section with no guard rails which you can walk down to get a better view. I wandered down there, cursing the fact I'd opted for old trainers rather than walking boots. I got down to the last bit it was safe to head to where there are big cctv cameras aimed at the puffin rock (don't ask me, maybe they got an asbo for noise). I was getting some shots form there and dropped my lens cap only to watch it roll downhill towards the cliff edge. My first thought was oh well, that's that gone then, but it got caught in a tuft of grass right on the edge of the cliff. I suddenly decided that a Canon 77mm lens cap was probably reasonably pricey to replace so I should probably make an effort to recover it. I carefully headed right to the cctv camera mounting to see if I could reach it but there was no chance sitting or standing. I ended up spread-eagled on the ground with a foot hooked into the flange at the bottom of the post holding the cctv cameras and managed, by reaching at full stretch, to recover my lens cap. I did feel fairly safe the whole time I was doing it but clearly it didn't look that safe as there were four people staring at me from the top of the cliff who gave me a very strange look when I walked past them a few minutes later. Of course had I realised I could actually replace it for a fiver I doubt I would have bothered. It certainly got the adrenaline flowing though.

When we got back to the cottage we discovered an old family friend, who had moved to Talmine up near Tongue a few years back, had popped in to visit on their way back from a job they were doing.

Then visit over we headed to the Smoo Cave hotel where my dad treated us all to dinner.

After that it was time for home, packing, blip then bed!

*This may be a wee bit of an exaggeration.