The accidental finding

By woodpeckers

Turf house at Glencoe

This was my official sightseeing in Glencoe day. I get the National Trust Scotland magazine, and had seen that there was a reconstruction of a traditional turf house open at the 'new' visitor centre. As I'd never been to the centre (opened 2002) either, it seemed time for a visit. The weather obliged us with sunshine.

K. only had to cook dinner for nursery, as the school staff were on strike. She picked us up at 1pm (we were ready, thank goodness) and we drove over to a craft centre/cafe for lunch. It's a place that my mother remembers, and enjoyed revisiting, though she did comment on a "horrid hospital" in the distance (I never did find out what it was; she has a thing about hospitals, and believed for a long time at her last house that she was actually living in one).

After lunch, we continued to the visitor centre, where we checked out the turf house. Access is via a walkway, but mother found the outdoor temperature very cold, and couldn't hear the ambient sounds in the turf house, and had no idea why we woukd want to be there, so K.took her off to the auditorium, where they watched educational films about how to make a wattle-and-turf house. I wandered around in useless fashion because I couldn't find the auditorium and didn't know where they were!

Once reunited at the car, we drove back and I got my mother sorted for supper and bed. K and her son N picked me up and whisked me back to K's house in Appin for  a roast lamb dinner, in honour of N's birthday, which was also last Sunday, the same day as his mother's. He's been staying with her for a few days, and working from home. I knew rhat N had graduated as a civil engineer and got a job, but I was amazed to hear him say that he wants to work at a nuclear power plant. Joked that I'd see him on the other side of the barricades one day.

They have plenty of vinyl, and both had been given reggae and other records for their birthdays, so we had a music session too. I drank prosecco (don't usually drink any alcohol) and all was well with the world. K dropped me back home at about midnight. She does an awful lot of driving.

I'm definitely going to go back to Glencoe and the visitor centre in summer, and our mother was absolutely delighted with a colour photography book she'd bought about Glencoe. It's going to be a source of pleasure for her for a long time. She had been driving through Glencoe for about fifty years, and still  goes to church there, but the book is a wonder to her.

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