We start of our volunteering with a day off - great!

The full days pics are through a click HERE

As I said on yesterdays write up, I woke at 7:15 for the umpteenth time and finally decided I may as well get up.
First order of the day way to look out of the window - and what a sight!

At this time in the morning the Stags were still roaring at each other to try and persuade the females that they were the ones to go for... but otherwise things were quiet, everyone else in the house was still asleep.

I put the shopping away and familierised myself with the kitchen and made a cup of coffee (boiling the water in a pan) and had the remained of a couple of buns that Helen and Jarod had made for me on Friday for breakfast. I also wrote a few emails on the chance that I may be able to send them. Unfortunately while Deanich does have a phone, the line is not good enough quality for a modem to work on it. The good news was that we were going to go up to the big house and watch something on TV, at which time I would have a chance to send the email.

We went up to Alladale and this was the first time that I had seen the house in the light - you can certainly see why someone would want to live there, or even come for just a visit (mind you at £2,500 to £3,500 per night depending on season, you have to have a reasonable sized wallet!)

I managed to send off my email which was good - an email back home to let them know I was OK and a picture from the front of the house to make them jealous about the scenery :-)

After we watched the living world program, Michael and I packed out bags and started to walk back to Deanich - 7 miles of undulating track... ETA about 3 hours. I brought with me my Garmin Etrex Legend GPS and was pleasantly surprised to find it already defined in there as a way point. I was not as happy a few hours later when we had walked 1.5 miles past where the GPS thought it was and we had not arrived yet. The GPS point turned out to be about 2 miles out!

The consolation was the beautiful countryside that we got to walk through (you can see all the pics here)

There was one obstacle that made it more than just a stroll in the countryside - that was the wind! The weather forecast for the next two days is gale force winds and rain! This is going to be interesting if we are going to be out on the hills assisting with the stalking - it is stag hunting time at the moment. Hunting is a reasonable part of the economy of the Highlands and once the game reserve is up and running it is one element which will be reduced, then removed from this area, but in the mean time it is very much required to finance the continuing survival of lots of rural communities.

Finally we rounded the last bend and there was 'home'.

Just as we walked onto the driveway Chris and Carol turned up so we all went in and got the fire going to get warm.

Then it was time to just sit back and relax for a while. Keeping the fire going to keep warm. Whilst the two other guys made venison lasagne (with fresh venison from the estate) I stoke up the boiler to heat up the water so we could have baths and showers after watching a film, then time for bed.

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