Munros nearly done

Wild campsite- my tent on the right

I am just back from a very wild camping trip in Scotland and the midges were the worst I have ever seen. Yours truly sits here itching madly. I will be blogging about the event on my other blog here http://keswickrambles.blogspot.co.uk/ fairly soon.  This is just a very quick posting this time as I have still not unpacked from the trip (we arrived back here only yesterday late). Now I need to find all the dirty stuff and put the washing machine on...

The best news though is that after 19 years plodding up the 3000 foot Scottish hills I have only one last Munro left to do.... wow!

Skye ~ Black Cuillins in sunshine are stunning but at 3000 feet just magical

This is a photo of a perfect day on the island of Skye off Scotland. I have just climbed a peek called Am Basteir and I am feeling elated.....The views are the most beautiful you will see anywhere in the world. Rugged rocks all around and sheer drops too but also distant shores and beaches. I climbed 12 Munros in 6 days and I have very sore fingertips to prove it. So sore infact that I have cuts on them still from the Gabbro rock which at times is like small pieces of glass embedded in the rock; not funny. Anyway, I wanted to explain that it will be a couple of days before they heal well enough for me to quilt without saying 'ouch' all the time. I am only just able to type tonight as yesterday I could not even do that without pain. But I am not complaining as the 6 days we had there will live with me forever as the most memorable time I ever experienced in the mountains. It never stays sunny and calm on Skye for 6 full days, so why did it when I was there? I can only say that I seem to have been given a reward or an award or something.......lucky is the phrase which comes to mind.

I've been away

The idea of camping in May is usually sound, afterall, the nights are light and in Scotland the midges are still hibernating, but it should also have been Spring like weather; well it wasn't, it was winter......

The first day as we set up camp gave no indication of how cold it was to become. Here I am with Bella after we pitched the tent and set things to right inside. We had purchased two camping chairs and the table especially for this trip so we could have a bit more comfort as usually we sit on the ground. I also added the luxury of a new double blow up airbed instead of old two very old Woolworth's Lilos which we had used for over 20 years! So this trip we were going to be luxurious and comfy I thought... Well we ended up staying four nights and I can tell you that the tent had ice on it every night. In the mornings I would unzip the flysheet to find it covered in ice and the ground frosty outside. One night my DH got up in the night to go to the toilet block and he slipped and fell on the steps because they were covered in frost which he could not see in the dark. I lay in the tent and heard the clatter, bang and expletive! Right, I thought, I will wait and see if he arrives back ok before I leave my tepid sleeping bag. Bella was so cold that she had to sleep in the bag with me so it was not easy to get in and out of the bag..... He came back, but was not too pleased at banging his elbow when he landed on the ground. He was fine by the morning however and we went up another mountain but he did complain that his arm would not bend......

We did achieve our objective by the way, just incase you thought the cold made us wimp out and we climbed three 3000 foot hills. The weather was not too bad on the last day and the sun came out for a while.

This is a shot of me coming off one of the Munro's called Beinn Fhionnlaidh which is Gaelic for Findlay's Mountain. It was towards the end of the hike as we came down to a stream with a couple of very rudimentary and rusty old bridges. We decided to just cross the stream on the rocks. Back at camp I discovered that my glasses had fallen out of my rucksack sometime just before this photo was taken. They had been stuffed into a red case and then were supposed to be pushed into a side pocket by my DH but he thinks that he probably pushed them between me and the rucksack strap because they were nowhere to be found. So I lost my glasses on the hill and if you dear reader happen to be on Beinn Fhionnlaidh and find them please let me know ;-)

Here is Bella waiting for us to load the car so we could go home. She was all wrapped up in her quilt because she did not like her bottom on the cold ground. So the answer was to keep her warm and snug.

Soon after this photo was taken we drove home and once inside the garden she could not wait to go and have a lovely roll in the grass on the lawn. I think she was really pleased that she had survived the camping trip.