Port Askaig Hotel

Some of the older historic sites - apparently prehistoric people put cups (or something) in the same place and caused marks in the rocks. Kind of funny that they always chose their meeting places way up on top of hills. Getting too much exercise today.

Also got to see another one of the canal locks.

... is to sign up with the distilleries beforehand. Joining up with Classic Malts (www.malts.com) gives you free entry (normally £5 or so), and with Laphroiag (http://www.laphroaig.com) they give you 1 foot square of land, plus your rent (a miniature cask strength whiskey)

Robert seemed to really enjoy the new scenery, but was a little unsettled at night as all the travelling was breaking up his routine.

For eating out ...

I think I can safely say my itinerary is almost there!

My map basically says it all, but the plan is to head out to Auckland, NZ, on the 23rd of November. I'll take a day or so to get over the jet lag before heading north. I'll begin with Great Barrier Island, North Island, working my way down to Wellington and over to Christchurch, with plenty of stop overs in between of course! The plan from there is to head up the west coast via Doubtful Sound...Fox Glacier etc ...

I've seen some strange sights so far, but none so surprising as this one: Tarbert without the crowds of drunken sailors! I decided to give myself a chilled out day so stopped for lunch at the Light Bites cafe, which seemed crazily busy for a random Wednesday. Thought I couldn't leave Tarbert ...

... all the Friends’ memberships, and plant a little American flag in the field where his “plot” is located. Each Friend owns a square inch or square foot or some such novel marketing ploy. We toasted my mom on her birthday (June 22nd) at the Port Charlotte Hotel restaurant, which was the best meal I had on the whole trip. It was thanks to her good investments, and hence my inheritance, that we were able to make the trip in the first place.

We are now back home in Tarbert and have temporarily swallowed the anchor but fully expect to re-gurgitate it in late 2009. Since being home we have rapidly come to realise just why we love living on the beautiful Kintyre Peninsula. The weather has been, mostly, pretty good, very cold but with the air gin clear and the winter sunlight giving drop dead gorgeous views of ...

Back In Lakki After our last cruise we arrived back in Lakki, were greeted by Bob (another one!), the yard manager, who we last saw on March 8th as we left Lakki for Samos and Turkey. It was good to be back and we had 3 weeks before our flights home on the 29th. For our first weekend we were welcomed with a substantial gale, which kind of got in the way of work. After that we knuckled down to sail washing, deck scrubbing, hull polishing and waxing, heads (toilets to ...

... went for a stroll into the village and beyond to the boat yard and aroun the point on a little track as suggested to us by the lovely Hazel on reception who really looked after our every need as did all the staff. we were made to feel so special as were all the other guests we spoke to. We arrived back in time for a quick snooze before dinner. We had a choice for dinner whether to eat in the Snug bar which offered more simple for ...

... pour la production de lait. Un petit coin de France quoi...Un agriculteur bio dans l'avion du retour me racontera que en réalité ils produisent de la viande à partir de veaux de races laitières les vaches laitières étant engrossées par un taureau de race à viande...qu'ils achètent sur les marchés francais pour des sommes allant jusqu'à 60 000 euros ...

... 17:45. It was only a short row to shore and a 10 minute walk to the hotel and whilst they say food tastes better if one has had to work hard for it, it beggars the imagination to improve on what we had, given the minimal effort we had to put in. Julie had enormous hand-dived scallops with Stornoway black pudding and I had mussels in a coconut curry sauce for starters. Both of us were absolutely delighted with our choices. The second ...