School trips and a bothy concert in Braemar

The kids both went on school trips last week and we were all alone for five days. It’s the first time we’ve not had a child in the house overnight since becoming parents. It was very quiet. Elizabeth went to Keswick in the Lake District and Daniel went camping in Glen Affric. Both participated in lots of activities including hiking, canoeing, canyoning, and in Daniel’s case, planting trees for Trees for Life. Here they both are early Monday before departing.

We’ve never been camping before as a family so I wondered how he’d find it but aside from having trouble stuffing his sleeping bag away after the first night I believe it all went well. I was hoping to see lots of photos of magnificent scenery but instead he took about a hundred photos of the rooster at the Great Glen Hostel where they spent one night.

For the record, the rooster is called Muffin.

Elizabeth took lots of nice photos including of Wordsworth’s house and some Roman ruins. It rained on most days for both of them – we had sunshine all week in Aberdeen – but that is typical of the west country which gets more rain than the east and they both enjoyed themselves regardless.

Today we went to Braemar for the folk festival and there was a walk to a bothy concert with Charlie Grey and Owen Sinclair. I’m not sure if they accidentally sold too many tickets or what but there were around 50 of us crammed into the very cute and cosy Felagie bothy on the Invercauld Estate. It has been raining non-stop all day but that didn’t deter people from going out for a walk. I took a short video of some of the music.