With Adam arriving first on the Thursday, then MarkG and John on Friday afternoon and Kevin later in the early evening, the weekend was shaping up to be a great laugh. We only had to wait until midday on Saturday for the last guests from Leeds (Connor and James) before we could settle down to fun times. We could not be bothered going out on Saturday night so had a night in with laughter and conversation and much booze.
Sunday we did some sight-seeing and then headed off to the Atholl Gathering which was a laugh, then to the pub for an hour or so before the Killiecrankie House Hotel for a well earned drink and then home as I had put the roast beef in the lower oven at 9am and it was ready for our return.
Once everyone left on either Monday or Tuesday, Anthony and I slept the afternoon away as we were exhausted!

With Ian and Justin visiting we took a chance to head up to Fort Augustus (nearest part of Loch Ness) for a quick view before heading along the west of Loch Ness to Inverness, down the A9 to Aviemore and home. We took in some of the most amazing scenery after Dalwhinnie so we stopped at Lagan Dam for a smoke and a view, noticing that the level of the dam water was very low.
All images in this post are clickable to the same images.

as we headed west to FA and when we got there it was packed with tourists all keen to take a boat out in search of that most elusive of beasts. Weather was lovely and dry, and helped by a great slice of cake!


Sadly for us the beast was missing, but Ian and I are sure we have narrowed down her nest to a couple of favourable sites on the east bank of the loch.

We carried on driving up towards Inverness and took the opportunity for a gratuitous Nessie photo on the way

Jo and Louise from my old MMS days (1991-2003) arrived for the weekend and brought amazing sunbeams to us all. We had a lovely weekend. Saturday saw us off to Blair Castle for a tour - well worth the visit. You could spend a happy afternoon just looking at the snuff-boxes, never mind the costumes, armoury, crockery and paintings. The rooms are quite magnificent. Then we headed to House of Bruar and back on the main A9 to Pitlochry for even more cups of tea and scones before home to get ready for Killiecrankie House Hotel for dinner. What a lovely day!
Jo and Louise are clickable!



Sunday saw us heading to Queen's View in brilliant sunshine and a tour round the edge of Loch Tummell and to Castle Menzies, (clickable below) which is nothing as lovely as Blair Castle but still good in a way.




We drove to the top of the hill at the back of the house to see the solar array and Jo found the resevoir, I really should explore my locality a bit better!

Watched Line of Duty S2 and S3 yesterday until the sun came up, so bed at 5am just like I was in my 30s! Hahaha! It was worth it but I did not get a really long rest in bed and got up at 11:30 to find Anthony in the middle of several calls which is not doing much for his study!

Had a walk in the garden and sat on the bank with Vincent in tow, taking funny pictures. This image is clickable of course! Prepare for ooh and ahh!

I did a quick walk through the garden today and counted eight different types of daffodil.

I think this is excessive! Clickable image.