Loch Aline wanderings

The wall to wall sunshine thing did not abate - luckily. Instead we enjoyed a couple more sunny days here. It was so good that we dug out the folding bikes again and headed around the loch to Ardtornish. The track had some pretty big potholes and some were still water filled despite 10 days without rain. Little folding bike wheels are not ideal in such circumstances but we made it and avoided getting punctures too. The Kinlochaline castle is a bit strange:

Not very defensive castle-like and an interesting shape too. Travelling around here (and in Dunstaffnage / Oban) we've seen more bluebells than ever before. Of course, they are a little later flowering than the ones we saw in Guernsey during our fuel stop in April which were already flagging. Here they look so surprised and happy to have some sun (a bit like us really)!

At the head of the loch, the river Aline runs into it:

under the bridge and then into the lovely loch:

A little further on (although up a little hill that tested the crew's pedaling abilities a little too much) is the very stylish Ardtornish house:

David (the Norn Iron mooring support man) managed to blag himself a trip around the place. We just went up the road to it, saw no-one, didn't get eaten by big guard dogs and cycled off again. Bit of an anti-climax really. Still, should be a nice holiday spot - see Ardtornish estate website if you are tempted but you might need 45 friends to join you and share the cost.

The village is very much small community minded. One shop and a restaurant that has rave reviews on Tripadvisor (The Whitehouse restaurant) but is housed in a building that you would just drive past. As a high class restuarant, we wonder why they want to display all the culinary award stickers from various organisations in one window. It looks seriously tacky - a bit like the old days when caravanners put pennants from each place they had visited in their window. Apologies to those caravan types we have just upset and to any bobil owners (you know who you are) who might have done the same thing before. The cutest thing is the community fuel pump:

The price of over £1.30 per litre was less cute of course. (For foreign readers, fuel is normally about £1.09 per litre at present in larger towns).

We even got keen and spent some time polishing (yes, there is always more to do....) Know what - the nice golf umbrella present that we were given in Norn Iron hasn't been unfurled yet.

A little more about you folks:

The monthly average post read has climbed to about 1,100 now. We expected that the nice weather would be dragging you all outside and away from your computers but no, your desire to read this rubbish continues. We remain amazed and horrified. Looks like we upset UAE man / woman with our comments in an earlier post - no more reads from there now. Sorry UAE person, perhaps you do like fettling your own carburettors.

We seem to have regular reads from China and Israel though. The captain used to visit China for work so perhaps he is being stalked by the authorities as he is "on their database". Israel is a puzzle though - please Mr / Mrs Israel send us a message using the facility at the end of this post and introduce yourself (even if you work for Mossad and are being paid to do so!)