Nethy Bridge (August 2014)

So.....

We went to a lovely place called Nethy Bridge for a week last year, not far from Aviemore.

I realise it's three quarters of a year later, but better late than never.

We had a great time, but it was somewhat hampered by the torrential rain. It was some of the worst rain I've ever seen. The local flooding made the national (UK) news. It was terrible. We had a river that had a bank 2-3 feet high where on our first day the kids could go down and throw some stones into the calm river. On the second day we weren't letting them anywhere near it, as the calm river had turned into some brown wild rapids.

Despite the weather we had a good time. Michael and Emma's cousin Sophie was there, and Michael especially had a great time with her. It did seem alien to me having a baby there that didn't wake up all the time during the night and would happily sit still in her play pen for longer than 2 minutes without trying to escape, but I shouldn't judge all children by our two's standards.

We had a day out with the Blacks and Grandma to an adventure park (www.landmarkpark.co.uk), which the kids had been to before when we were in Aviemore. It was great! As you can see from the photos, there were some great optical illusions there. Michael genuinely gave me a fright when he went around the corner then his head just appeared coming through a table. The photos don't do it justice, but you couldn't see the mirrors there until you really looked. Sarah tried the high-rope challenge, and even although it was really a medium-rope challenge, it was terrifying for her. Thankfully the rain held off for the 3 or so hours we were there, but it started pretty heavy again just as we were leaving.

We ended up playing a lot of french bowls in the back garden. You had to be careful, as the back garden was really steep all the way down to the river, so if you threw the bowl too hard it'd roll down the hill. Emma was surprisingly good I remember.

I got to go out for a wee 20 minute walk with Michael one day, up the road to the bridge over the now-troubled water. It was a nice wee walk and we got to talk about trees and stuff. He went on the same walk with Grandma and Ben (the dog) a couple of days later, but was gone for a couple of hours. When they finally got back to the house, it turned out that they walked as far as halfway across the bridge, spent some time there, then Grandma thought it was one way off the bridge and Michael thought it was the other, but deferred to Grandma which meant they went the wrong way onto the other side of the river and had to walk all the way on the other bank through the village, down to the next bridge, then crossed to come back. Ben had a lot of exercise that day, as did Michael and Grandma.

The Blacks went down to play golf at the local putting green, which turned out just to be 4 random holes in a lawn across from the Hotel. Still, it was fun playing a bit of golf with the kids. 

They got to go on a special train ride. I sat that one out, but I remember them getting back, and Sarah telling me that Michael had been disappointed that he didn't get to go on the shiny new train at the station, but had to get on the old steam train instead. I think he missed the whole point of the train ride.