Antiques, wildflowers, and unicorns

The first day of our week off - hooray. We decided to stay quite local for our exploring today and our first stop was at Auldearn Antiques which is an aladdins cave of stuff! So many things that you could furnish a whole house and find clothes to wear if you were into a retro vintage life.

As you arrive one of the first things you see is this lovely old clothes mangle with the wooden wheelbarrow that is being used as a planter.

There are lots of toilets scattered around the site and yes, one of has got plants in it. If you look closely, especially the nurses amongst you, you'll see a metal bed pan peeking out from between the toilets.

Once inside it's difficult to know where to look first as there are so many things that I would love to have space for - this pile of cases really appealed to me and I'm tempted to go back and get one to turn into a cat bed.

Another toilet, this one decorated and very pretty.

We found these lovely character jugs on different shelves - a Toby jug shows the whole person whilst the character jug is just the head and shoulders. The top one is an Old Charley small but I couldn't find a name for the second one.

Here's some very old golf clubs - I thought it was fitting to take a picture of these as the Scottish Open is currently taking place just along the road from where we live.

I love it, in amongst everything we found an Aussie a very long way from home - a very rare white koala. We did buy a piece of furniture but you'll have to wait until the end of the post to see what we got.

Whilst we were in Auldearn we took the opportunity to visit the Boath Doocot which was built in the 17th century on the site of an ancient castle built in the 12th century by William the Lion. From the this spot you look out over the fields below where the Battle of Auldearn took place in May 1645 between the Covenators and the Royalists.

Site of the battle

Broom bush covered in seed pods.

A bridge we go over quite regularly is Logie Bridge on the river Findhorn and today we took the time to stop and explore around it. The bridge is a listed structure as it was built in the early 1800's and is a Thomas Telford bridge. It's in a very picturesque spot yet near the carpark someone had dumped an old bed and other rubbish - I just don't understand the mentality of people who do that to our beautiful land.

On the rocks beside the river there are lots of small wild flowers, not all of which we know the name of, so here's a selection for you.

I think these are Selfheals

Harebells

Not sure about these

Or these

The view down the river - another spot that will be great for a picnic in the future if we get some nice days.

The colour of the water reminds me of home as lots of rivers in Tasmania are the colour of a really strong cup of tea. In Tassie the colour comes from the tannin released from button grass and here the colour comes from the water passing through peat.

Here's a selfie of us both trying to hide our chins - I'm using Ken's shoulder as a shield and Ken is going for the hold my neck tightly look.

 Below is the lovely Brook Thistle which has no thorns and can grow up to a metre tall - very pretty and my favourite colour.

The bridge from the other side.

Here's my arty shot of the day - leaf with red spots on it and a daisy.

After our wander around the bridge and the river we headed to Logie Steading for the compulsory cake break. The cafe is The Olive Tree and has really lovely treats.

One thing that I've discovered recently is that lots of cafes in the highlands put lovely wildflowers in their toilets, so here is another toilet shot for you. Beautiful purple and pink flowers - in fact all along the sinks they had pretty little jugs with flowers and in the window there were foxgloves which grow wild here.

Whilst at Logie Steading my must visit shop is Hellygog which sells wonderful crafty things and I rarely come out without having bought something. I love the fabric animal heads and they have a box of scrap fabric in the shop where you can donate material for their creations.

The wreaths made out of fabric scraps are lovely and the painted fireplace is really cute.

Mounted unicorn heads - beautiful.

Now for the item of furniture that we bought at Auldearn Antiques - it's a school desk. I love it and is perfect for sitting at to write our blog and in the desk I can keep my organisers and lovely pens. So as you read this you can picture me sitting on my blue chair typing away with my ramblings. What you can't really see in the picture is that my laptop is purple - what else could it be.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and have a really wonderful week.

Pamela & Ken
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