Sorry I Masked

Good morning! How lovely to be sipping a post-breakfast cuppa on a  sunny Saturday morning and gazing out of the window. There’s not a breath of wind, the birds are singing, and a deer stares shyly back at me through the glass before ambling off through the trees. A voice drifts down from upstairs… “Your bath is nearly overflowing!”

Bath? Upstairs..? In Vince…? Unfortunately not. We arrived home late last night. John Ketley has predicted a few dry days for painting the outside of the house so they’re too good to miss d’oh! Still, it’s nice to see those fallow deer again, we do love living on the edge of the Galloway Forest. 

When we last spoke we were parked up in Dunardry overlooking the Crinan Canal. It looked no less beautiful in the morning sunlight so I nipped off for an early (ish) morning jog along the towpath while Gill had an hour’s peace watching the energetic yachtists opening and closing the lock gates all along our stretch of canal. She was wafted back to similar sunny mornings in France, as a French motorhome had parked beside us the evening before. As they do, they ran their engine for thirty minutes on waking, without going anywhere – maybe they can’t get their filthy Gauloises over here and make do with diesel fumes? I don’t know, but I suspect it’s a battery charging thing. There’s no need for it really.

After showers and this huge bucket of porridge, (I forgot you can’t microwave Vince’s melamine breakfast bowls and this was the only other option!!) we set off again.

We’d phoned ahead to make sure our pitch wasn’t still flooded at Lochgilphead Caravan Park. The cheery owner thankfully confirmed all was back to normal, and that the facilities were fully open. If you click on the link, ours was the third pitch from the right in the second row back on their home page 😀

We have an uneasy relationship with caravannists; in truth we’re a little envious of the space they enjoy inside, and they can travel further afield in the car once they’ve settled in. We still think a Vince is better for touring around and hopping frequently from place to place as he’s so easy to set up. Park up, handbrake on, put the kettle on! I think that’s the area where caravan users are probably a bit envious of us as we don’t have awnings, steadies, water butts or any waste tank nonsense to worry about.

You can probably imagine my annoyance then, when the chap in the next door caravan saw me looking blankly at one end of our hook-up cable (I’d wound it up the opposite way to the way I usually do).
“No mate, that’s the end you plug into the van, not the outlet socket.”
I felt like a complete newbie, and there was nothing I could do about it. There was no point saying –
“Yes, I’m perfectly aware of that my good fellow, be off with you, and get about your business…”
Smug so-and-so.

Lochgilphead is a busy wee tourist town. It’s located rather unsurprisingly at the head of Loch Gilp. At this end of the sea-loch it’s quite shallow so the tide, which was in when we arrived, recedes for what seems miles. When I popped out for our fish & chips in the evening it had all but disappeared over the horizon!

This was my first post-Covid attempt at a visit to a chip-shop and it went something like this:
“Mph-mmph-mph, mmmph-mmph & mmph mmph?“
“Mmph-mph?”
“Mph-mmph-mph, mmmph-mmph & mmph mmph?“
“Mmph-mph?”
…and repeat.

Communicating with face-coverings on in a noisy chippie is not easy! A masked customer talking to a masked assistant through a perspex screen, makes for many misunderstandings. Their system seemed to work though. You place your order then you get thrown back on the street with a collection time twenty minutes hence. It means your meal is freshly cooked and arrives at a nuclear temperature. It was still too hot to touch after I’d walked back to the site.

And I can’t think of a better way to end this little series of posts than with fresh fish & chips in a pleasant Scottish town on the shores of a sea-loch. It was a short, sweet and very wet few days but there’s nowhere I’d rather be than with m’best girl and the big fella. We have a few more house renovation things to do yet, but I’m sure we’ll squeeze in another adventure before too long.

In the meantime, stay safe and we look forward to chatting again soon 🙂

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