More Scotland - but with snow!!

We left Arran last Sunday and prepared to head even further north to finish the trip off with a visit to H's aunt and uncle who live near Oban. It's a good trek from Arran but a whole lot nearer to Arran than Warwickshire. After you get past Glasgow the route takes you past some of the most spectacular scenery you could find - along the side of Loch Lomond and then up into the Scottish Highlands for real.

I'd love to report on the feeling of driving up past mountains soaring up into a peerless sky but ... well it is Scotland .... it started raining. Then the rain started to get a little clumpy and within 5 minutes it looked like this:

From inside the car it's like being in at 3D film with those funny red and green glasses - lots of little things coming towards you but nothing actually hits you. That's a mountain in the snow in case it isn't clear - photography from a moving car (even a car moving slowly in the snow) isn't easy.

As we came down from the mountains the snow turned back into rain, in front of a beautiful sky:

And that set the tone for our two day visit - it was grey mostly, rained occasionally but it was calm, relaxed and chilled out with only a hint of the storms hitting the rest of the country in messages from my mother along the lines of "house still on cliff. Not so sure about the garden" as they faced the teeth of a force 9 gale.

The uncle and aunt live pretty much on the shores of Loch Etive which is inland from Oban and the whole area is very like the Westcountry plus mountains so I felt right at home - we went for walks along the loch shore with Rosie the every springing springer spaniel, visited Oban which I thought was just like Dartmouth (a town near where I grew up) only to discover that Uncle's reaction to Dartmouth had been exactly the same!

And then after two lovely days we had to turn around and head south. We took a different route out of the Highlands and drove through a place that is quite genuinely called Rest and be Thankful. I don't have any pictures because we weren't able to stop but Rest is at the top of a steep valley running down to Loch Fyne and it's stunning. You can also immediately see why you needed a rest!

So now we are back into the usual routine, commuting, work and more commuting and trying to resist the temptation to sell up, move to Oban and sell ice-creams and knitted jumpers (seasonally of course!).

All of this driving and relaxing with family means knitting and so without further ado we have the Argyll square:

Mountains, heather and seaside all in one.

I also did a little sock knitting and now for the first time get to show off my new sock blockers - these are my MILs monkey birthday socks for the end of March.

They really aren't as retina searing in person I promise

I've been making good progress on the Neigbourhood Tunnels socks from the Socktopus club as well but as I'm near the end of the sock and it's nightime, I'll save that for another day!