New Bed

I've got a new bed. It's a proper big boy bed. And it comes with a paint-job for my room. Gone are the yellow walls and duckies everywhere, in comes blue walls, space-ships, stars and planets!

I had grown out of my old bed but this new bed is great - I can finally fit The Guys in with me again!

Edinburgh Zoo

We went to Edinburgh Zoo today. The main reason is Daddy had some photography homework to do but he tried to make it sound like he was doing me a favour. We saw all the usual animals and then some. Even the rhino was out eating near the viewing point while we were there. Daddy seemed to like the penguins and we spent a while there, lucky for me it had a climbing frame too!

Who's actually behind the fence here?

And if you're interested, here's Daddy's best of the day...

Tom Baraidh Walk

While at Granny and Grandpa's, Daddy and I went for a walk in the Tom Baraidh woods near Granny's house. It's famous for having lots of red squirrels in it and Daddy bet me three stars that I couldn't spot one before he did. We walked for ages, trying to stay quiet so that we wouldn't spook them until we finally had to give up and come back. We hadn't seen any! On the way back we made a bit more noise but the competition was still on to see who would see a squirrel first (there was a separate competition to see who would fall over first since we were looking for squirrels and not watching where we were puting our feet!). Unfortunately, Daddy saw the first squirrel. Double unfortunately, it saw him first and scarpered up the tree (Daddy wouldn't have even seen it if it hadn't made so much noise!). He really wanted to get some pictures but it was so high and deliberately standing behind branches that he couldn't get a good focus on it. We had the same problem with another one we found just before leaving the wood. I think we'll come back though and have this competition again!

Highland Wildlife Park II

We went to the Highland Wildlife Park again while in Kingussie. One of the great things about coming here is that I get to drive the car around the enclosure. Mummy and Daddy both said I was very good at it this time and much better than normal. I can't wait to get another go at driving the car.

The tigers are looking great here. The cubs look almost as big as their Mummy and Daddy, in fact I'm not sure we can tell the difference any more! They look fabulous and we were there at feeding time. They now get their meat hidden and hanging from trees. It's amazing to see them climb trees and haul at these massive chunks of meat.

Pattack Falls

We went out to Pattack Falls this morning. Mummy and Daddy have a new book with a bunch of walks in the area around Granny and Grandpa's. A lot of them are probably still a bit long for me (not to mention Mummy!) but Daddy really wanted to go see the Pattack Falls as they're very near where you park the car.

We went on a short waymarked walk there - only took about 15 or 20 minutes. At one point, Daddy went the opposite way from us. Mummy and me were following the signs and Daddy wanted to see if he could get a better view of the waterfall. In the end, Daddy met us half-way around, it turned out he was following the same route in the opposite direction.

Mummy told Daddy that she'd been wondering if he'd be able to catch up and if he knew where we were but Daddy assured her that he could hear my voice at all times!

Ruthven Barracks II

First thing this morning we went to Ruthven Barracks. This time we took the correct swords. Ruthven Barracks is kind of where the whole sword-fighting-at-castles thing started a couple of years ago. At that time, Daddy and I had a battle with some Playmobil swords and having since invested in larger swords it's much more fun and a lot more obvious in the photos!

Ruthven Barracks is really nice and pretty well looked after by Historic Scotland. When we were there this time there were four guys from Historic Scotland building a new brick support for the sign in the car park and making repairs to the one in the barracks. It was nice to see craftsmen like this at work and just shows the effort Historic Scotland go to.

Hailes Castle

After Seacliff Beach it was off to Hailes Castle - a busy day! This was a really nice find. Daddy had spotted the signposts on the way to Tantallon and the man at Tantallon had recommended it too. It's unmanned (so free) but very nice and extremely well kept. It sits beside a nice big river and for being really quite remote it had quite a few visitors while we were there. So much so that we had to wait for a gap in the tourists to get our sword fighting done in peace!