Exploring

It's the last week of the summer holidays and Dad has taken some time off work so that we can have a few days up north before going back to school.

For one of the days we went exploring with Auntie Anne and Uncle Ian. They took us on a great walk up a Craig Mony to an ancient hill fort. The walk was through an old forest with some really massive trees!

Although the fort was barely recognisable, after a lovely picnic lunch supplied by Auntie Anne, Dad and I had to carry out the tradition of having a sword fight!

The walk back down through some more massive trees was fun.

Then it was off through another wood to reach the backs of Loch Ness. We couldn't find the monster but we did find some very friendly ducks!

After that, we went back to Auntie Anne's for some more food. We had a fabulous day and I hope we can do it again.

Feshie River Cairns

On the front page of the Strathy this week was an article about some cairns that have popped up alongside the river Feshie. The article deliberately didn't give any detail about where exactly it was but with a little google mapping and an educated guess about where they were most likely, Dad and I went out looking for them.

Our guess was right and they were well worth the trip. Majestic little stone towers on the bank of the river. Lots of them. Someone had been extremely busy! We added our own and it was only while attempting this that we begun to appreciate just the amount of effort that had gone into building these. Some were as big as me! Dad and me couldn't make any nearly that big before they would fall over.

Also in the area was a fallen tree. This was perfect because just that morning there had been an article on the paper about the National Trusts new campaign of 50 things to do before you're 11 and 3/4. Dad had checked out the list and was pleased to see that I'd already completed most of them but there were a few still to do. One or two he was very surprised we hadn't already done at some point and here we had an opportunity to cross one of those off. That was walking across a fallen tree. It turned out to be a lot of fun and we spent about as much time on this tree as we did building cairns! Enjoy the photos (and see if you can spot me on some of the ones of the tree!)...

This isn't forced perspective - they really are as tall as me!

 Can you see me in the background building my own cairn?

Here we go!

The finished article!

One fallen tree...

I'm up there somewhere!

Canal Locks

Today, while at Auntie Lesley's, we went to the canal. There are loads of locks at this canal and while we were there, a group of people were taking their boat through the locks. They very kindly explained all about the locks to me and allowed me to help them open and close one of them. It was great fun! Afterwards, Dad dragged us on a long walk to the bottom of the lock flight. It's a total of 16 locks (and three geocaches!). It's fine going down, but then you just have to turn and come back up! You can learn more about the locks here.