Hosts Jim, but not as we know them

We've met some amazing people this year. As we move rapidly towards our last WWOOF host (Monday! Eek!) I've been reflecting on some of the interesting, inspiring and incredibly hospitable hosts we've stayed with.

We have also stayed with various friends and family over the course of this year, often at times when we really needed friendly faces and welcomming arms and we are so very grateful for the times friends have come through for us. There are various people who deserve special mentions - and believe me I have a whole Wondering Wanderers awards ceremony type blogpost waiting in reserve for just such a time, with theme music, tearful acceptance speeches and some sort of gong based loosely on Willow, oh and spangly dresses and guest presenters and.... oops sorry, drifted off a little there!

Anyway, where I am going with this is a rather long winded but heartfelt and slightly tearful THANK YOU to Lynda and Stuart. Friends who have become family and who have been supportive, kind and very hospitable to us this year. We have stayed with them several times on our way past their home and had hoped they would be able to visit us on our Scottish leg of the adventure. Sure enough they came up to Scotland AND we got to share the holiday cottage they booked.

Luxury. A bed, a bath, flushing toilets, sofas, TV, plug sockets and a kitchen! In exchange for welcomming us into their cottage and giving us lifts and supplying lots of ingredients we did the catering for the week and got to bake bread, cook roast dinners, boil broth, make crumbles and pies and generally remember what life is like with more space and more facilities.

Willow was fixed and is now up and running again - thanks to our breakdown cover and fab service by a local recovery service we are able to complete this last bit of the journey.

So we've had a lovely week exploring Fort William. We climbed the very first little bit of Ben Nevis which we could see out of the windows of the cottage (we'll be back one day with proper footwear to climb the whole thing), we did loads of walking, we watched the steam trains each day running close to the cottage, visited Inverlochy Castle and enjoyed full days activity knowing we had a warm bath followed by a soft bed at the end of each day.


Thank you so much, we love you lots xxx