The loch shows an infinite variety of faces as the light hits it on different days.

Lucky used to be a stray girl but has now found her new identity as a Donich Lodge boy (the vet discovered he was male when we took “her” to be spayed). He would ask you to respect his new pronouns.

The high mountain pass over the Rest and be Thankful is the main route out of the village. Here it is in winter.

Spring sky over the mountain tops.

Sunset from our front door step.

A misty moon over the mountains as darkness falls.

View over towards the loch from near the summit of Cnoc Coinnich.

A rainbow appears in a clear interval between showers.

Lochgoilhead in the distance on a clear spring morning.

As the year turns, the mountains are white on most days.

Looking across the loch from the village, clouds form a band across the hills.

Tora and Schrodi our snow Bengal brothers used to live here. RIP both of you

A dragonfly pauses for a rest by the side of our pond.

The weather here can be appalling. Here gales and torrential rain have blocked one of the village’s few roads.

The colours on the mountains fade to muted browns as autumn approaches.

The Donich Water in one of its kinder moods as it runs through our garden.

One of a myriad insects pollinating our heather.

A group of wild haggis have made a den down by the river.

Our new Highland Tiger Saphy prowling her territory. She is a demon for the wildlife with her specialized prey item being shrews. She is not adverse to mice, voles or birds however.

This is Amber aka as Bramble. She is big, black, rather podgy and a bit of a scaredy cat. We had her cloned shortly after she arrived.

Although we don’t get much snow at loch level, the higher mountains are covered for five months or so of the year

SERRANO - MINIMAL, CLEAN, FRESH

Expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms Purchase

May 1st, 2014

Read More

Cat meets Badger

I caught this little encounter (click image above for video) on the webcam from last night. Obviously the badger is not phased out by its meeting with Schrodi, and Schrodi (whilst clearly not thrilled) is not terrified either.

May 1st, 2014

Read More

I tawt I taw a puddy Tat

We have just seen a large orange cat calmly make its way out of the woods behind the house and saunter over to the front garden where it spent some time in the heather contemplating its next move before heading off through the fence towards the river. In the direction it came from there is […]

Apr 30th, 2014

Read More

Everything in the Garden….

The garden is really coming on in force now. We’ve been away for under 48 hours on a trip to London and there have been so many changes in that time I can hardly believe it. In the cultivated formal garden to the front of the house, the two magnolia trees are out. The pieris […]

Apr 30th, 2014

Read More

Town or Country

We’ve just been off to London for a day to attend a conference. Rather than get up at 4am to catch the ‘red-eye’ flight – we decided to catch the sleeper train from Arrochar. It took us 20 minutes to get to the station in time to catch the 22:45 ‘Caledonia Sleeper’ to Euston. By […]

Apr 26th, 2014

Read More

Castle Carrick walk

Today R and I finally went for a look at Castle Carrick which is over at the other side of the loch. He has not been keen on the idea because he was concerned that the single track road would be really busy with traffic for the holiday camp – in the end it wasn’t […]

Apr 26th, 2014

Read More

Long time no post

I finally got a bit sick of the website setup I had. Basically the main (non-blog) site started off with me hand coding it just to show off a few photos. And the blog started as my personal site which was hosted on wordpress.com. Then I amalgamated them and discovered that it was very difficult […]

Apr 19th, 2014

Read More

Easter climb of Benn Donich

We’ve been wanting to climb the ‘mountain in our back garden’ since we moved in – but between the bad weather and general business, we have always seemed to be putting it off. This Friday we finally remedied this and got up there – we had a fantastic day and I’m actually glad we waited. […]

Apr 16th, 2014

Read More

In which we meet a new addition to the Donich Wildlife

Right in the middle of the road outside – what should there be but a newt. They are supposed to be nocturnal and shy, but this fellow was up and about in the middle of the day and didn’t seem very scared of us. I was concerned that he might get run over so I […]

Apr 14th, 2014

Read More

Deer Fencing up

Well that is the vegetable plots dug and the deer fencing up around them. I don’t think much to the instructions that came with the cage – it just said ‘make a 14″ deep hole for each pole and hammer it in to the ground’. Well that may be all very well in some gardens, […]

Apr 10th, 2014

Read More

In which we meet Marten face to face

Another big night for wildlife here. Firstly – we finally saw our friend the pine marten in the flesh for the first time. He seems to have been visiting the feeder much earlier – around 9pm rather than 2am, and last night I just glanced out of the window and there he was – this […]