Row,row ,row your boat

We made it to Aigas today for the garden open day. It had poured all morning but brightened up to leave a sunny and dry afternoon.

Aigas House and gardens is the family home to Sir John Lister-Kaye who discovered the building in ruins in 1976 and has spent along time restoring and developing the area into a haven for wildlife and is now a field study centre as well as offering week long holidays with experts in a range of fields from photography to art and creative writing courses and trips to discover the local wildlife .
Autumn and winter watch spent this year here finding out about the beavers, pinemartens and otter to name a few.

You can see more photos here more photos

We explored the gardens which were created and looked after by Lady Lister-kaye and then went on a tour with their daughter around the grounds. It was fascinating.

In the picture you can see the Loch where the Beavers swim at dusk amongst the waterlilies, eating their tender roots. We saw a tree that was gnawed by their sharp teeth.
The two men in the boat were fly fishing for trout and they had quite an audience watching them.
We saw the pinemarten feeding station put up by the Autumn watch team.

After the walk we enjoyed tea and cake in the Grand Hall.

We returned by the Beauly Firth and were thrilled when we spotted an Osprey fishing. It hovered for a few minutes and then dived into the water making a splash. It then flew away towards Beauly.

Happy days:)