A day with Colleen & Bob.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Banavie, Scotland, United Kingdom

We began the day with Jill being at Mums and vibering so we could talk to her. Don’t know if I mentioned, but soon after we arrived here in UK, I loaded £20 on the UK sim and made a phone call to Mum to see how she was. About 5-8mins later the pips went!!!!! $40, that was the end of that exercise, we now email, and at 97 she is very good at it!

Colleen & Bob arrived at 10am and we set off in our car for Neptune’s Staircase. It wasn’t a fantastic day weather wise, but we were warm and dry - me in my walking sleeping bag.

"The small village of Banavie, just four miles north of Fort William, is overlooked by the magnificent Ben Nevis and is home to the impressive Neptune’s Staircase.

This amazing feat of engineering raises the canal by 19m (62ft) over a quarter of a mile of continuous masonry and takes around 90 minutes for a boat to travel up or down the locks. Built by Thomas Telford between 1803 and 1822, it is the longest staircase lock in Britain. An ideal location for enjoy ‘gongoozling’ the boats as they travel up and down the lock flight!"

A very serene peaceful place here today, I think it would be really busy in the summer months.

Later in the day we went to the National Trust for Scotland Glencoe Visitor Centre - were not prepared to say how long it took for us to find it, Kevin was driving so he’s excused, but between Colleen, Bob and me on phones, iPads and brochures it took quite sometime.

It was well worth it when we did get there. The weather suited the locality too. The terrible truth of the 1692 Clan MacDonald massacre at Glencoe. http://www.heartoscotland.com/Categories/CampbellsandMacDonalds.htm

Thought we’d overshoot our driveway on the way back to take Colleen & Bob to see the Glenfinnian Rail Viaduct which we will be railing along in the morning. Couldn’t believe the people there, it was still a very damp murky day, not cold tho.

Finished the day with Bob looking after the chips and pizzas while I reinstated Colleens hair colour. Would you believe we haven’t even had fish n chips yet. Sunday night in Orkney it was to be, in Whitehills, and tonight, but Saturday night is fish n chip night in Scotland and most are CLOSED Sunday night.