My on-the-lam camera has returned to me. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, aided by a traitorous backpack, the camera’s brief journey to Perth and parts unknown has come to an end. It took the efforts of four kind Scots to facilitate its return – Annette, who located the camera in Perth rail station’s non-communicative Lost Property office; an unknown honest person who found it under a seat and turned it in at Perth; Roger, our gregarious driver around Inverness; and Andy, Roger’s mysterious retrieval agent who just happened to be passing through Perth at the right time and was willing to coerce ScotsRail into releasing it. I hope I managed to send enough thank-you cash to Roger and Andy for their efforts. I won’t forget their goodwill.

Today is a mirror image of our first post-wedding days in Scotland 25 years ago. Rainy, overcast and cold, with no end in sight. Highlands weather. Our hotel here in Foyers is great, as is our room – hotel shown in title picture above. Elegant, situated with an amazing view of the Loch (when the clouds part, occasionally), quiet, and boasting a Michelin-starred rating. Our original post-wedding stay on the Isle of Skye was similar. But I’m much better equipped to deal with the forced stay-inside weather now than I was 25 years ago. Back then there was no Wifi, no laptop with me. A nascent worldwide Internet, certainly not present on Skye. And I’m much more tolerant of forced downtime now than I was then. Sipping coffee this morning in a plush sitting room, decorated as a turn of the century Britain library, watching the cold rain outside, is…OK. Reading, writing, contemplating…it’s all good. We planned to ride e-bikes today and do some hiking, but it doesn’t appear the rain will stop. We might go anyway – light rain in a hillside Scottish forest or in the tiny village square could be fun. We’ll see. Here’s the view we got yesterday upon arrival, during a brief break from the gloom as the storm approached from the west.

After our time here at Loch Ness, we leave for a long drive to Edinburgh, then a short flight from Scotland to Shannon, Ireland. We’ll visit Shannon, Dingle, Killarney and Dublin in our brief four day stay. The weather in Ireland looks a tiny bit better – there’s a chance it won’t rain at least one of the days we’re there.