Blog hopping, bog hopping and rock hopping...

Well, as usual we have had an amazing time here at the Isle of Eriska and big thanks to Beppo and his team for looking after us (and to Jonathan for paying!!). We love the Sage and Chive spa suites and this time we stayed in Sage. It's great because as well as the lovely big bedroom and bathroom we have a living room with a table I can scrap on, a conservatory and a Jacuzzi in the yard. The food here is amazing (thank you chef) and every night is 'Movie night' - so far we have watched 'Deja Vu', 'Dorian Gray' and 'Next' and tonight it's 'The girl with the dragon tattoo (I managed to read the last 300 pages of the book today in preparation!).

So back to the title of my blog - the weekend when we got here started off with me having fun taking part in my first blog hop with the design dollies web site and I am delighted that I won a prize from the superbly talented Karen (it's a shame she has to pay postage all the way from Australia - she's obviously very kind and nice as well as talented). I also had a go at their colour challenge which is here and this is my LO... (I thought I’d do a LO about Jonathan since I always seem to be saying thank you to him for things in my blog)… Hopping over to the Chicken Soup challenge blog their challenge for this week was to use yellow/black/white/ grunge style and I altered this cheap notebook as my 'entry'...

Ok, so the 'bog hop and rock hop' part of the blog... actually this entry could have been called 'a not entirely fruitless exercise' or 'slim pickings' because yesterday I decided to throw on my waterproof coat don my new walking boots and head down to shell point on Eriska to scour the scrub for bilberries. Having had so much rain on Monday the going underfoot was very wet and I ended up on my knees in the bog on more than one occasion (I'm better at blog hopping than bog hopping). I did manage to find a few bilberries but I think the birds had beaten me to it as all the ones I found were hidden down inside the bushes - so after two and a half hours of picking all I ended up with was a small sandwich bag of berries. But to be honest with a view like this you don't mind spending that amount of time out picking berries...

My bilberry 'haul' (by the way they are NOT the same as blueberries!!)... Oh and wait till you see them in the pie..!!

When I heard the air-sea rescue helicopter overhead, I looked in panic at my watch but I was still ok for time (Jonathan had said "If you're not back by 6.30 I'll call air-sea rescue!). However I decided that the best route back would be along the rocky coastline and that rock hopping would be preferable to bog hopping. After half an hour of rock climbing with the tide rapidly coming in I made it back. I didn't slip once and thanks to my absolutely fantastic new walking boots (thanks Jonathan! - I seem to say that a lot!) my feet stayed warm and dry even though I was wet up to my knees on the outside. I was delighted (once back on the path) to see one of Eriska's deer bounding in front of me and even more delighted to climb into the Jacuzzi when I finally made it back to our suite. The therapist at the spa massaged away the remaining aches and pains from all the jumping, climbing, crawling and reaching for berries!

My absolutely fabulous Salomon ortholite boots after their first real 'trial'!