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

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Sep 20th, 2014

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Aigas – Day 1

This morning we left the cats in the capable hands of J and set off North for Aigas. It is about 120 miles from Lochgoilhead, near Beauly on the Black Isle. Although it is good (by Highland standards) roads all the way, we reckoned it would take us over 3 hours because of general congestion. […]

Sep 20th, 2014

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Off on our travels…

R and I are off on holiday this week – hopefully with a bit more leisure than on our last trip away where our conference holiday in Cambridge seemed to turn into a lot more conference than holiday. This time we are going to the Aigas Field Centre near Inverness for a week. There will […]

Sep 17th, 2014

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Deep in the Forest…

Something is stirring…. Since yesterday I have been hearing some odd noises coming from the woods. At first I thought it was cows bellowing – but it suddenly occurred to me that this is starting to come in to the Red deer rutting season. I looked up what noises they make here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Red_Deer and […]

Sep 12th, 2014

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On the move

I am in Helensburgh this afternoon and unusually for me without a tablet PC. So I thought I would try a blog posting using just my phone. And here it is…

Sep 11th, 2014

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Late Evening Walk

Tonight R and I walked up the Donich Circular to the Waterfalls. It was a wonderful evening for it, clear and lovely. When we got up on to the hillside at the other side of the falls, the sun has just set and the sky was stippled with golden clouds, while the hills and loch […]

Sep 9th, 2014

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Can you bake a Pie?

I made a fancy French ‘Tarte aux Pommes’ tonight to use up some of the apples from our trees on something a bit memorable. It was (or is – we haven’t finished it yet) a sweet pastry case (make it like shortcrust pastry only with a bit more butter to flour than usual (8oz flour, […]

Sep 7th, 2014

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Another fantastic Walk

Today we did another fantastic walk – this one courtesy of R (whose idea it was). The weather is much much better for walking now than it was a month ago – as well as all the midgies being gone, it is also quite cool and crisp. I must say that I deliberately slackened off […]

Sep 4th, 2014

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The Birds are back in town

During the course of the summer we haven’t seen that many birds… Well we have seen them around of course – but not in the numbers there were in the winter and spring, and often we could leave the feeder all day with little activity. Now all of a sudden they are back in force […]

Sep 1st, 2014

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Named and Shamed

Since I took these photographs this morning he has just come in with yet another one. Alive and intact this time. I managed to catch it and put it outside – it went scooting off into the undergrowth as fast as its little legs would take it. For such a sweet fluffy little fuzzball – […]

Aug 31st, 2014

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Insects, Fungi and Food

We saw some fantastic insects today, and the first of the autumn fungi are starting to appear. An enormous dragonfly landed on the path in front of me and obligingly let me take his picture. Then a lovely peacock butterfly followed suit. Nature’s harvest is obviously ready very early this year. There are hazelnuts on […]