We made it to the highlands! I’ve got holiday cancellation PTSD and before each holiday now I get paranoid that it’ll be canceled too. The night before we left I woke up at 2am thinking I’d lost my sense of taste and smell. I went downstairs and tasted some salt, felt reassured that it tasted salty, then went back to bed. What strange times these are.
The highlands are draped in a ghost-like frost, called hoar frost. This is when water vapour in the air comes into contact with objects that have a surface temperature below zero causing the vapour to immediately form ice crystals. I’ve never seen it before and it’s beautiful.
Today we went for a little walk around Gynack Burn which is the stream you can see in the middle of this next photo.
Victoria wanted to come for a walk too so she joined us.
Ben is pretending to look mournful in this next one but really he loves it just as much as I do. Or maybe 85% as much.
How could anyone not look with wonder and delight upon this magical scene?
Robert Louis Stevenson evidently spent holidays here and was inspired to write the poem Where Go The Boats about Gynack Burn after racing paper boats down it.
Where Go the Boats
Dark brown is the river.
Golden is the sand.
It flows along for ever,
With trees on either hand.
Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating—
Where will all come home?
On goes the river
And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
Away down the hill.
Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore.
This little red robin seemed to enjoy having his photo taken.
rachel.blog 
Are you staying there for Christmas? We’re having some really warm weather right now, but the forecasted temperature for Christmas Day is only 17 degrees with showers – lol! Still, rather have that than the 42 degrees my brother in Perth says they’re expecting for Christmas Day.
We are staying in the Highlands for Christmas. We planned it for Christmas last year but of course everything got cancelled. 42 degrees sounds awful but then I’ve never liked the heat. 17 sounds lovely though!
Well done for making it! What a magical thing to do. It is weird to hear about you, the most rational of people, going off to taste salt. We do live in weird times. It’s never occurred to me to go away somewhere genuinely white for Christmas, I hope you have a lovely Christmassy time.
Every year I long for snow at Christmas and I figured the closest I’m going to get to it is Christmas in the Highlands. Even if there’s no snow it’s still lovely and nice to get away from the city for a bit.