Between September and October we had the most perfect holiday in the Scottish Highlands. We are lucky to have generous parents, my Mum paid for the cottage, while father-in-law paid for the hire car so that we could drive up there all the way from Cambridgeshire.
We couldn't get the Sat nav to work but it didn't matter because my map reading skills and husbands sense of direction were both good and we easily found our way up through to Letterfearn near Kyle of Lochalsh, after stopping over night at Grasmere in the Lake District.
Unfortunately we arrived after dark, luckily we had a torch. Because our letting agents instructions were rather vague, "drive down the unadopted road until you see the small red post box on your left, after this, the cottage will be the last one on your right."
 Ehm, the unadopted road went on for about five miles, around the mountain side, with the drop into the Loch Duich on your immediate right, so, I wondered how will we  know which is the last house? We found this out after passing a cluster of cottages and climbing up and then dropping down a very steep bit of lane which then began turning into a cart track. Half way down this steep track we decided that we had better turn around, couldn't do it as the clutch wouldn't hold on the steep incline in order to reverse up, so there was nothing for it but for me to take the torch and go ahead of the car, as a scout to see if we could find the cottage, I found a derelict croft next to the loch with enough of a turning circle for the car, I stood  between the car and the loch waving my torch, if the car had gone into the loch my life wouldn't have been worth living anyway! We drove back unscathed, only to find the gate to the cottage was indeed last in the line of the cottages only set at an angle so we couldn't see it, with cottage set further back than the others, so it couldn't be seen from the road either. We had our adventure, and we had a really relaxing week, the only problem was leaving, I didn't want to go, threatened to barricade myself in, hoped the lane would be blocked by a landslip, but to no avail. The journey back was equally lovely, we arrived in Grasmere again, at night, after stopping at Castlerigg Stone Circle outside Keswick to watch the sun set, a very beautiful and atmospheric place, the stones were on a hill surrounded by a ring of mountains, and there was a smaller stone circle within it, so I think it's probably a very magical place too.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about Letterfearn, the place I left my heart.

            Letterfearn

Please leave me in Letterfearn,
Where the air is nectar sweet.
While mountain birds are playing,
Loch Duich will wash my feet.
And smoothed pebbles are glittering,
Along the bejewelled shore,
I will have no cares there,
I will want for nothing more.
Peace drenches Letterfearn,
Sleep soaked me there,
As I listened to the tumbling Burn,
Cocooned in her mountains, so fair.

I nearly forgot to say, my hubby has just bought a very small piece of land for us in a conservation area in Glencoe and apparently under Scottish law I am now entitled to call myself Lady Andrea of Glencoe, I think it has a nice feel to it, perhaps one should rename ones blog.