Glamping in Glenshee

At the weekend I ticked another item off my bucket list, and that was glamping (glamorous camping). We stayed at the wonderful Glenshee Ecocamp which is in Perthshire and 94 miles away from us. The drive down is through stunning scenery and even the sky was spectacular.

I love the quirky things we find when we're out and about - this garden is adorable with different Buddha statues throughout. At the top is a platform for sitting out which must be very peaceful.

Another picture of the very rugged scenery of the Cairngorms.

Look at our tent of loveliness! It's beautiful and so my colours. Our tent was at the very edges of the campsite which meant furthest from toilets but it also meant it was the most peaceful spot on the site.

Even Bramble was catered for with a pink food bowl and a giant dog treat - I love it when places we stay do something like this as it's acknowledging how much a part of the family our furbies are.

This puppy dog was staying at the campsite as well and regularly came to visit - she would make me laugh as she would sneak into the tent as if we weren't going to notice her, but then she would pick up the scent of dog food or treats and start investigating.

Bramble meeting one of the permanent residents of the campsite - she was very nervous and Ken had to spend ages encouraging her to get near. The donkey just patiently waited for her to come and say hello.

We went out for tea on the first evening at a pub that was about ten minutes away. We had fish and chips, but not just any battered fish, the batter was made using prosecco! It was scrummy.

On our way home we came across a very Scottish road block - pheasants everywhere. The campsite bordered a huge Scottish estate where they breed pheasants for shooting (murdering) with the season starting on October 1st. It was lovely lying in bed listening to them talk to each other at night.

In our tent was a tiny wood burner which helped to keep us toasty and warm at night - here's Ken doing his man thing with the fire (I tried and was a disaster at firestarting).

Inside the tent was a low table, a bed, and lots of lamps and candles. There was also a kettle if you wanted to put it on the woodburner. This is looking up at the top of the tent from the bed.

At night........

In the morning.......

Apart from the donkeys there were several other residents of the farm including llamas which they do trekking with.

Lots of chickens and in amongst the chickens there was a goat.

This is looking towards our tent across part of the site. There were two of the green wagons plus several pods near the main house for people to stay in. If we were to go in winter I think I'd choose to stay in one of the wagons as they look really cosy and cute.

Me and Bramble relaxing at the tent. There were some really pretty floor cushions that we could use outside - it was so relaxing sitting there, reading and enjoying the view.

As you can see, I dug out my festival wellingtons and they fitted in with the colour scheme of the tent perfectly.

Down the road from the ecocamp was this very cute library in an old phone box. It wasn't the only one we saw in this area and I think it's a great use of them and lovely to have somewhere to recycle books for others to read.

Both the lovely donkeys.

Someone (Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom) commented on my facebook post that our tent looked like a unicorn tent, so what do I do, go out and adopt a unicorn for the tent. Importantly it's a purple horned unicorn.

What better way to enjoy Prosecco than drinking it out of the bottle through a purple straw whilst enjoying the great outdoors.

Sunset on our second evening - we sat outside the tent to eat and it was beautiful.

Another view of the tent of loveliness - you can see the smoke coming out of the chimney. I should add that again I tried to light the fire with no success and then Ken stepped in like a proper bushman and made fire.

Bramble sleeps in her crate at night but in the morning she took great pleasure in getting into bed between the two of us - I personally think it's more about being next to her daddy and pushing me out. This photo of the two of them is so cute (and slightly disturbing).

Really loved this weekend in the tent of loveliness with my wonderful husband and one of our furbies. Have you ever tried glamping, or do you prefer all the comforts of a five star hotel.

The area we explored will be in another post, as there's way to much to put in this one. Until next time, be good, stay safe, and make sure you're kind to yourself this week.

Pamela & Ken

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Top Ten Thursday: Decisions

Today's top ten Thursday is all about decisions - the regular everyday ones and the huge life changing ones. Thank you to Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom for setting the theme. I'm not always the best at making decisions, and can ruminate over things for ages.

1. Clothes: I've never been very good at deciding what I'm going to wear to work each day and no matter how many times I tell myself I should get them ready the night before I always find myself standing in front of my wardrobe in the morning debating my choices (and yelling out to Ken to see if certain items are in the wash or not).

2. Coffee: Now this may seem like a foregone conclusion, but I still go through the decision making process when I have a coffee. It goes a bit like this; shall I have a coffee? yes, yes I should have a coffee - decision made.

3. Politics: Another thing that I sometimes struggle with making a decision about. I'm usually pretty clear in my mind who I definitely won't be voting for so the person or party I vote for is usually decided by a process of elimination.

4. Holidays: this decision is about whether we holiday in this country or abroad. If it's this country do we take Bramble Jelly with us or leave her with someone? By the time we come to a decision it's usually so near to our holiday time that we can get a good late deal.

5. Films: My beloved and I haven't been to the pictures for ages as usually we can't decide what to see and don't very often want to see the same thing. This meant that flying to and from Australia gave us the chance to still be together but watch films that we wanted to watch - Ken watching moody serious films, and me having a monster/disaster film festival of my own.

I had an interesting discussion with someone recently about whether or not we do actually have any choice in life or if it's just an illusion. We're all just walking a straight path and it's when we look at the past that we think we could have made different decisions and then our lives would have been different.

6. Nursing: going by the above thought, it could be said that when I decided to be a nurse at age seven, that was when my life was set on a path to my beloved, because if I hadn't been a nurse then we wouldn't have met - or would we?

7. Meat Free: the decision to give up meat when it happened was quite easy and yet it had been in my head for years. I used to say to people that I'd be a vegetarian except I would miss chicken too much, or I'd miss bacon. I made the decision in May 2016 and not once since then have I missed either type of meat - makes me wish I'd done this earlier in life.

8. Shopping: sometimes when I go into the supermarket and Ken stays in the car I'm sure he often thinks he should send in a search party as big supermarkets totally bamboozle me and I end up wandering around for ages, backtracking on myself as I forget to get things and then forget where they are in the aisles, and have little debates with myself about what to buy. They basically turn me into the most indecisive person in the world.

9. Marriage: probably the easiest decision I've ever made was saying yes to my beloved's marriage proposal.

10. Love: here's a decision that I believe we have no control over whatsoever, our heart and soul decide who is for them and all we can do is hang on and enjoy the ride.

Are you good at making decisions? Do you think that life is planned out for us or do you believe in destiny?

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and treat yourself this week to something nice.

Pamela & Ken
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Hodgepodge Wednesday - my convoluted ramblings

I've discovered the Wednesday Hodgepodge challenge which is hosted by Joyce at the blog From This Side of the Pond and is our answers to a selection of questions - be prepared for seeing how my brain works in a slightly rambling way.

1. When you think about your future what do you fear most? Hope for the most?

Nothing like jumping straight in with a tough question, but easy as I have a longstanding irrational fear that started in my twenties. When I lived in Sydney there was a news item about a lady that had died at home with no one realising for several months and I remember being really upset by that as how could someone be so alone in life that they could just disappear from life without a thought from anyone. Here's an even worse story about a lady in Sydney that had been dead in her home for eight years - Click Here to read. So my fear for the future is that I die and no one notices.

My hope for the future is that my beloved and I have many, many more happy years together.

2. September is National Chicken Month. How often is chicken on the menu at your house? What's a favorite dish made with chicken? What's something you're a 'chicken' about doing or trying?

Now that we're pescatarians (fish eating vegetarians) chicken is no longer on the menu, but when we did eat it I think my favourite was a toss up between a good roast chicken, or scrummy barbecued chicken. I thought that I would miss it when we stopped eating it but I really haven't.

I'm a big chicken when it comes to visiting the dentist - Ken has to stay in the waiting room the whole time in case I need him, and there are usually tears involved (yes, I'm a big baby). Due to this I don't go to the dentist nearly as often as I should.

3. What are three things you don't own but wish you did?

I would love to have a piano. I had lessons for years as a child/teenager and I feel this is a skill that is disappearing more with every year that goes by. When I was younger I wanted a white baby grand piano, but now I'd settle for a plain old brown upright.

For my beloved I would love to own a garage or large shed so that he could tinker away to his hearts content on whatever old car he happens to have at the time. (He has a slightly worrying love for his cars).

Owning a house is a dream of many people and we're included in that. We don't want much, a small cottage with a small garden that we could sit out in to enjoy nature.

4. Would you rather be a jack of all trades or a master of one? Elaborate.  If you answered one, which one?

I would love to be a master of languages. How lovely it would be to be able to communicate with more people in their own language - I think the world would be a much better place. And when I say languages that includes sign language. I know bits of several languages, hello in German, French, Arabic, Japanese, Italian, Sign Language - I think that's all of them, and I know quite a few more words in Arabic from my time working there.

5. Ketchup or mustard? On what?

Neither. If I had my choice it would be barbecue sauce and especially on fish fingers. The perfect way to have it is in a fish finger sandwich with fresh white bread, barbecue sauce spread on both slices, and four fish fingers squashed between them. I even prefer barbecue sauce on chips - does that make me weird?

6.  Insert your own random thought here.

I'm noticing more and more lately that people don't take any notice of when someone else is trying to take a photo and they just walk in front of the camera/phone. My beloved thinks it's just because they are ignorant and aren't very self aware. I think it might have something to do with digital cameras. People know that it's not going to waste film if they walk through a shot and know that it can just be taken again - or am I trying to put more thought into what is basically a  non thinking act?

So there you have my answers, I wonder what your answers would be to the questions? Before you go, pop over to Joyce's blog and see what my fellow bloggers have come up with for the Wednesday Hodgepodge.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and make sure you take moments to really enjoy life.

Pamela & Ken
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Cars Galore at Grantown on Spey's Motormania

Last weekend was a visit to Thunder in the Glens and the enjoyment of Harley Davidsons. This weekend it was vehicles of the four wheeled variety at Grantown on Spey Motormania. Thankfully it was a lovely day so we headed out and of course we stopped at a coffeeshop on the way - the Dava Schoolhouse where they have a Cairngorm Leaf and Bean cafe with speciality coffees and scrummy cakes.

Ken had Russian Earl Grey and there were very interesting things floating around in the tea mix.

For Motormania they shut down the town of Grantown with the cars lining the main street through the town. It was crazy busy this year with loads of cars for my beloved to enjoy and people enjoying the atmosphere. To get from the carpark (in a paddock) to the main street you can walk, or you can take a journey on a vintage Macbraynes bus - of course we took the bus so that we can tell Ken's bus mad brother that we were on one of his favourite buses.

 The day is a mixture of vintage and the more modern cars - here's a selection of cars that caught my attention (the mini because of the awful colour it is).

Amongst all the cars there was also a few campervans with this one being the nicest - I could just picture the two of us heading off for a weekend in this.

I have been reliably informed by my motor expert (Ken) that the below car is a Subaru, but what is most important is that the engine has been accessorised with pink!! Plus there are also parts that have been covered with day of the dead artwork - it's so fabulous.

Continuing on the pink/purple theme, here is a lovely Morris Minor in lilac.

And then there was this escort with the engine accessorised in purple.

Another selection of the cars that were there - my favourite of these was the little red bubble car whilst Ken's was the one in the top righthand corner (I don't know what it is, just that it's old).

Lots of dogs had been dragged out into the mayhem (we left Bramble Jelly at home) and there were all shapes and sizes. One of the stalls was for Husky Rescue and it was lovely meeting the Huskies - this one had the most beautiful blue eyes. The Golden Retriever was on the back of one of the trucks and looked like he'd be lovely to cuddle.

Interesting sticker on one of the old cars - I've always thought my beloved had a strange obsession with vintage cars so maybe this explains it.

This a Trabant, a car manufactured in East Germany and another of Ken's favourites - the photo below this one is Ken sitting in one when we were in Budapest a few years ago.

After that very old car that is probably held together with gaffa tape, here's a couple of very modern creations - the first one looks like something out of a science fiction film.

Part way down the street we made a slight detour to Inverallan Church which is set back behind the main street. It's a beautiful church and I really loved the window as sometimes seeing nature through the glass is just as lovely as stained glass. It reminds me of an episode of the Vicar of Dibley where their church window was broken in a storm and in the end they replaced it with plain glass.

Amongst all the cars there were also a few motorbikes, both vintage and modern. This bike and sidecar look like they should be travelling across a desert somewhere on some huge adventure.

This is a vintage AA Road Assist bike and sidecar with all the bits in the sidecar that were needed to help broken down cars.

Very sleek bike with a beautiful paint job - if you look closely you can see a horse painted on the fuel tank.

 My beloved drooling over a Ford Anglia (at this point he's rattling off more details about the car but it all sounds like a foreign language to me).

This was the entertainment area that had several different bands/choirs throughout the day - this was a jazz band.

Two of the trucks that were there - Ken would like the blue one and I can see it's benefits, we could drive off somewhere romantic and sleep in the back under the stars.

I'm going to say that this is a Citroen 2CV and check with Ken when he comes back in the room (he's back and I was correct which is slightly worrying as I'm obviously absorbing car information by osmosis).

On the backseat was this beautiful greyhound - I'd spotted her earlier in the day and she is grace personified. Before you worry about her, the roof on the car was open so she wouldn't get too hot and she was sound asleep until I started talking to her.

One of the only negatives of going to a vintage car festival is that if you leave too late in the day you are bound to get stuck behind a car that can only go about 30 miles an hour (please ignore our dirty windscreen).

Hope you've enjoyed this visit to Motormania and if you're a petrol head then it's definitely worth a visit.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and do something nice for yourself this week.

Pamela & Ken
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P.S: Recent pictures of the brats as they haven't featured in our posts lately.