Not a view from the narrowboat! I have vacated Naomhòg, leaving her in the hands of my step brother and his partner for a week whilst our family congregates in the Highlands of Scotland for our son G’s wedding to Mi. Such stunning scenery and beautiful weather which, ironically is set to change on Saturday! But it wouldn’t be Scotland without the rain!
What a treat to be in a proper house with space, a large bed and a very powerful shower, never mind the luxury of two baths! The house sleeps 10 and our family are gradually filling it up. So rural is the location that the nearest food store is either 14 miles away or a short ferry journey which costs £20 return so could make for an expensive bottle of milk or loaf of bread. I decided to be clever and placed a large Morrison’s order to be delivered on Tuesday, with enough food to last the week so no shopping would be needed. The best laid plans…..
First off, anticipating how much food we would need proved problematic, especially as we have very little space in our car to return home with leftovers. It is not recommended that we drink the water so all water needs to be bought in, again very hard to judge quantities. I must have spent a good three hours putting together the online shop. I then made the mistake of thinking it would be easy to make a few last minute changes. Our younger daughter is moving house this week and rang to ask me if I’d like the seven loaves of frozen bread from their freezer. Of course I said yes! I had had no idea how much bread to order but knowing seven loaves would be ample I needed to remove the five loaves already ordered! Once I started to make changes I made quite a few and then it came to checking out. I don’t know if you are familiar with online banking but everything needs verification (understandable in the fight against fraud) and for some reason the bank could not be contacted to verify my new spend. So I rang Morrisons customer services who suggested I use another card. My debit card appeared to work so I heaved a sigh of relief and thought no more about it until 4am in the morning. On waking early I looked at a message on my phone. At 0015 the bank had texted me to verify my payment to Morrison’s and as I had not responded they had cancelled my entire online shop!! Panic, then calm as I realised I could still do a click and collect in the afternoon. However I only had one hour before the slot would be released to someone else so at 4am in the morning I had to re-enter my entire order under intense time pressure. Why didn’t I just visit the supermarket? I am still trying to isolate as much as I can before Saturday so the prospect of a lengthy time inside a shop doesn’t appeal!
The silver lining was that I could pick up our daughter H from the train station along with the shopping so she was very happy not to have to take a taxi! However it transpired quite a few items were unavailable including all the bottled water!! So infact we ended up in Aldi doing a supermarket dash in order to reduce the possibility of any covid viral overload!
We are near to where son G project managed the building of a sustainable house a few years ago. A local architect builds eco houses and at the time he was employing ex-offenders recently released from prison, in order to help rehabilitate them into work. So having located the house on the map, just over an hour’s journey, we set off, picnic in tow, hoping to knock on the door and see inside! Infact noone was at home so all viewing was external. The views from the house were stunning and we also found a beautiful picnic spot. Coupled with the glorious scenery en route it made for a great road trip.
On our way home we decided to go along the private back road that runs from G’s soon to be in-laws to the house we are currently staying in. Mi had made it sound relatively straight forward but she was unaware our car has a very low suspension, made even lower by three people sitting in the back! So every so often there would be a terrible sound, like the sound of our exhaust being ripped off the bottom of the car. It was unnerving to say the least and then we went up a road that wasn’t really a road, but once started there was nowhere to turn, so we just had to keep going forward. Eventually we arrived at a small clearing which was a dead end but with enough space to turn the car around and return along the perilous track. We did take the opportunity to get out of the car and walk up a small hill where we were rewarded with the most stunning views along the lock including Ben Nevis in the distance, still snow covered. Behind us was a not insubstantial hill that turned out to be the ‘proposal hill’. G and Mi had walked up it in very inclement weather on her birthday and he had got down on bended knee in the rain and wind!
So our vista at present is very different to where our boat is on the waterways and it’s great to know Ro can experience narrowboat life whilst we are here. It is my hope that Naomhòg can be enjoyed by others for short retreats from the busyness of normal life. If we feel that they feel they can be responsible for the boat and enjoy what is essentially upmarket camping then I hope friends will get in touch and we can offer them a glimpse of the boating life.
NarrowboatTLC 