Steve The Wandering Aussie

09/12/2023. Newtonmore, Scottish Highlands.
We’re home. Our second home. A small stone cottage in a small grey stone village in the Caringorm National Park. Scotland.
We lived here for 14 weeks in 2019, pre Covid. Today we drove 300 miles (500km) from Penrith in Cumbria, England to our current domicile. We have five frozen, snowy, relaxing and glorious weeks of happiness and solitude ahead of us. Life is good and we are grateful.
We’ve had a week in a resort in Cumbria, the Lakes District of Northern England. The weather was atrocious at best and the resort facilities were all non-functional during our stay. On the upside, I did have a beer at the Boot and Shoe Pub in the village of Greystoke. Like Tarzan but no vines or great apes but it did have low ceilings and rolling Northern English accents and good beer.
The skies were grey, the ground was wet but the ducks appreciated our grandsons feeding them with the mixed seeds gifted to us by the office staff.
The very best part was bonding with my two Scotty Grandsons. Hugs and smiles and Grandi do this with me, Grandi do that with me. There is no greater joy.
Now we are returned to our cottage. Newtonmore. With heavy hearts we left here four years ago to go home to Australia after a five month holiday. Now this is the last phase of our ‘gap year’ sojourn to our second favorite part of the planet.
38 days till touchdown in Brisbane.
We are ringed by snow capped mountains and munroes (tall hills) with freezing rivers and howling winds and , God Love Me, I’m maddeningly HAPPY to be here.
First task was lighting the combustion stove fireplace and preparing a jug of mulled wine. Cinnamon and cloves, a little sugar and a couple of slices of orange. It sits in a terracotta jug on the edge of the fireplace, well off the boil, filling the room with its spicy scent, exciting our tongues and mellowing our tummies.
This is what I’ve dreamed of for the past four years.

Sadly, Lyn has to work three mornings per week, listening to her clients catastrophic lives while secretly chillin’ in our little heavenly slice.
Life is good and I am grateful. Every day and for everything.