Mainland Lite

A mad 22 hours off island.

A put off too long dentist visit for us all - a six month checkup and some slightly overdue dental work for Scarlett. This is the shortest possible trip off the island you can manage I think - leaving Rum at 2pm on Monday and returning at 1135am on Tuesday. Luckily our dentist stays open late to accommodate such things. It meant hiring a car (with four of us this works out marginally cheaper than a return train trip and means we can stock up at the supermarket and not add stress of catching trains to the always slightly fraught nature of a mainland trip), finding somewhere to stay and keeping everything crossed that nothing went wrong with our arrangements.

One friend looked after Bonnie and fed the pigs and poultry for us back on Rum, another friend picked us up at the ferry and ran us most of the way back with all our stuff. We managed to barter a turkey for a bed and breakfast deal in Mallaig. We offset the cost of the car hire and ferry trip by buying some fruit trees, seeds and other bits and pieces that would have been more expensive to source online and get delivered. We used vouchers from online surveys to part pay for our fast food dinner. It was as frugal a trip as possible.

We had a scare that the boat may not run today which could have had us stranded on the mainland until Thursday and worried us a lot. It was a rough crossing - poor Scarlett was seasick, but we got home, spent the rest of the day marching up and down the hill bringing things home and will all sleep very well back in our own beds tonight.