Thought I would document this as I feel it's a bit of a milestone in my healing process.
My last 'proper' holiday was when I went to Tenerife in 2015 with Ian and Margaret, my brother and sister-in-law, which was a mixed experience as Mum had just died the week before and I was pretty unwell. However when Mum was in the nursing home, she had wanted us to still go and I felt safe with them - they were very accommodating about what I could do - they had booked for 2 weeks but I was there for just the first week so they kind of focussed on showing me the island that week and did activities that we could all do. I was very grateful.
You'll remember I mentioned needing to get the wallpapering in the hall, stairs and landing done and the carpet changed. In 2008 when Nikki and I were being shown round the house we were left to go upstairs and have a look ourselves and, pointing to the wallpaper and carpet I remember whispering to her 'they're going to be the first to go'. Ha! I never got round to it after we moved in as the bathroom needed changing first then my health started to decline and then a few years later, my life plummeted into hell overnight so that was that.
Last year I finally got in touch with a decorator and he gave me a quote in January but said it would probably take 5 days. With the symptoms I've got, no way could I cope with having someone in the house all day every day for a week so I asked if we could leave it till the summer, my plan being to maybe take off in the afternoon in the car and stay out for several hours each day to give him peace to get on with it. He had also said he could be partly flexible, start at 12 and work to 8 if that would help which I really appreciated.
That wasn't ideal either though. We don't have a guaranteed good summer in Scotland - it was quite feasible that I could be sitting miserably in a car in the pouring rain all week if I picked the wrong week! So I toyed with the idea of going away somewhere at the same time knowing that would be stressful enough in itself as I hadn't been away on my own for literally years so I wasn't keen to have the two stressors going on together but I honestly couldn't see how this was going to happen otherwise.
Last year my friend Caroline, who is going through the same withdrawal I'm going through, had mentioned her holiday cottage which her family has in a tiny village called Oldhamstocks, about an hour south of Edinburgh - very peaceful and healing and a wonderful place to go to get away from it all - and I remembered this. It's not a commercial thing - they only let it out to family and friends - but she'd said if things ever got too much anytime and I fancied staying there for a few days, to let her know.
So I got in touch, she gave me some dates, I contacted the decorator, he could do one of the weeks, so we put a plan into action.
And in the second week of July it all came together.
Oldhamstocks is tiny - just basically one street as you can see here -
it's about half the length of that going the other way and the cottage is actually the back half of what was originally a church which had been in Caroline's husband's family for generations.
They had converted the church into two cottages, sold the front part and renovated the back part which they keep for family and friends and when they want to get away from it all. It's surprisingly big though - 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, sitting room with dining area, utility room and a conservatory looking onto a lovely sheltered little garden.
This gives a better idea of the size of it - it's the white one.
This is the back as the main door is at the side.
And the back garden which was a sun trap and which I spent a lot of time in before heading off somewhere. There were gorgeous huge raspberries in it which I had for my breakfast every morning😊
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I travelled down on the Sunday, extremely glad that I'd slept ok the night before and found a local Asda where I stopped and stocked up on food for the week. Because it's just for friends and family, you have to take your own bedding and Caroline wanted me to stay in the main bedroom as it was the largest and lightest. However it had a king size bed and I only have a single but she very kindly came down the week before and made up the king size bed for me with her own bedding then I just washed it and left it to dry before I went back home.
I was so glad as that bedroom had lovely views of the hills from my bed.
It panned out pretty well all told - I'm still very symptomatic so that got in the way somewhat but as a first holiday away, it probably couldn't have been a better scenario to be honest. The weather was absolutely fantastic - lovely sunshine every day but not too hot to be outside - I actually had to go to a charity shop during the week to try and grab another couple of short-sleeved tops as I didn't have enough because the forecast the week before had been rain all week then it changed dramatically!
The only thing I had to be careful about was that attractions like castles, museums and the like close at 5 p.m. - I'm still in bed in the mornings but it doesn't impact me so much in Aberdeen as shops are open till 8 or 9 p.m. here - however there I had to remember to get going by 3 p.m. at the latest in order to get to somewhere in time for the last entry and it meant I could only visit one thing per day but that was fine.
On Monday I drove around some of the towns/villages to get familiar with the surroundings and the roads - the coastline round there is just beautiful and there are some gorgeous beaches - Caroline had told me about some of the places to visit so I made a plan that night sussing out what I wanted to see so that I could space everything out and it worked well. Later that afternoon I went down to Cove which has a little bay, only accessible by a long, dark tunnel said to be used by smugglers years ago - that pinprick of light you can see is the other end.
It's a little disconcerting going through it I have to admit - it sort of twist and turns and is very dark for most of it - it wasn't till afterwards I thought I could have used my phone torch to illuminate the way!
And then it comes out into this cute little bay which has some amazing caves - it's not well known so is rarely crowded.
There's a very evocative sculpture there depicting a disaster known as the Eyemouth Disaster, when, on the 14th of October, 1881, a windstorm, the strongest form of a cyclone, hit the coast with a great force and killed 189 fishermen. 11 of them were from Cove leaving their desolate families to live in a place which was a constant reminder of their grief. This is it from behind with the families looking out to sea.
And from the front where the distress is very well depicted on every face.
And then I drove to Hailes Castle which is a ruin so I didn't have to worry about closing times but unfortunately there had been falling masonry so there were barriers all round it and you couldn't explore which was a shame because it looked very explorable!
On Tuesday I visited North Berwick, a lovely little seaside town with several beaches like this one -
and a Sealife Centre which runs boat tours. It also has 'proper' shops - not the shopping mall ones you see in every large town but little independent ones with lovely individual, unusual stuff rather than the mass produced stuff you get everywhere.
And then on the way back I popped into Dunbar - another very picturesque town on the coast - it has a beautiful harbour and a very scenic clifftop walk which I did (in parts) on various days.
And then in the evening I joined the support group I run which had got into a bit of a panic - I normally open and close the room but had got my friend, Sarah, to log in as me so that she could be the host instead and I could have a week off or join if I felt like it depending on what I was doing. That was a good move as it turned out because the signal at the cottage was really bad so the connection kept dipping. However when Sarah tried to log in, Zoom security decided this was dodgy looking because they didn't recognise her device so had sent me a code to verify it - except at that point I was merrily driving back from North Berwick obviously not looking at my phone thinking how nice it was that I was having a break from the weekly commitment of the group, so never saw it! When I pulled up at the cottage there were several missed phone calls from various folk and frantic messages from Sarah but we got it all sorted in the end and opened up half an hour late.
It was quite funny - Caroline is part of this group as well and was on that night too - and so I'm sitting in the conservatory with the iPad on the group in this rocking chair
when something caught my eye and here was A RAT speeding across the patio towards the garden! I don't know if you can make it out here but this was when it came back later in the week (by which time it had earned the label 'cute' because it used to lift acorns in its wee paws and nibble away at them).
I was horrified but of course couldn't register anything because I wasn't sure if this was normal for that part of the world (there's a river not far from the cottage and it WAS the countryside) so wasn't sure how Caroline would take it if I said anything! It was so hard to keep my face calm and I wasn't managing it very well so I got up and walked about for a few minutes trying to calm down. But when I met her later in the week she knew! She said she could tell by my face what had happened but obviously couldn't say in case it wasn't that - it was really funny! (Although not so much at the time ......)
On Wednesday I visited Tantallon Castle which I'd seen the day before on my drive to North Berwick -
There was a lot of climbing circular stone steps which made me dizzy! But produced lovely views from the ramparts.
The rock you see in the water in the background of the above photo is Bass Rock and is a very evocative island, quite prominent from many places along that coast and beautiful when the sun is shining on it.
While I was at the Castle, I noticed a boat trip going out to it and another island and thought how lovely and cool that would be (it was a really hot day that day) so I booked up for that for the Saturday when I got back to the cottage. And on the way back I noticed a private beach off the beaten track so investigated that and made a mental note to come back to that later on in the week as well.
And then Thursday - disaster!
I had gone into Dunbar to visit the John Muir museum - he was a naturalist, author, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist and instrumental in the preservation of wilderness in the USA, especially the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park. He was born in Dunbar in 1838 and the house where he was born is now a museum dedicated to him. He wrote about his experiences, often including amazing drawings in letters and journals like these.
These are some quotes of his I loved.
The museum was in the High Street and I'd spied a couple of charity shops further up so popped into them to get some cooler tops and when I got back to the car, decided to go and finish the clifftop walk I'd started on the Monday.
The car clearly had other ideas and decided it was having a day off thankyouverymuch. The brake pedal went into limp mode which meant it would start but wouldn't go into gear or move and the amber engine light was on. This had happened once before and after 10 minutes it started so I waited but nope - left it for 20 minutes - nope. So decided to go for a walk and hope a longer period of time would help. Nope.
With stress levels through the roof, mentally visualising what I could leave at the cottage and what I really needed to take home with me if I had to take the train home and get the car towed - AGAIN (this was the first long trip I'd done since the car had broken down on a 100 mile journey up to Inverness last September so as well as being my first trip away on my own and getting the decorating done, it was partly serving as a way of regaining confidence in it!!!!), I contacted my breakdown company, one which I hadn't used before (more stress) but was recommended by my sister and within the hour, a mechanic came out and did diagnostics but couldn't come up with anything which seemed relevant. Then he started the car and it moved! He said he hadn't cleared any codes and had no idea why it would have gone into limp mode but as he was from the neighbouring village to Oldhamstocks (had a garage there), he followed me along the main road to make sure I got to my turnoff at least and also that I had his work phone number in case of further problems so that was really kind of him.
But that effectively pretty much ruined the rest of the holiday because I was on tenterhooks every time I stopped the car in case it wouldn't start again. It did it again on the Saturday evening but only for 10 minutes this time so when I came back to Aberdeen on the Sunday, I told my bladder we were doing the journey in a oner (4 hours) and deal with it - which it did thank goodness. I only had half a cold pizza left over from tea the night before so that had to serve as lunch, eaten while driving! It was a shame though as I'd planned to stop at a couple of towns I didn't get to in the week on the way home and do more exploring as it was still lovely weather but I just couldn't risk it.
So that put a bit of a damper on things but on Friday I met up with Caroline and we spent a few hours together walking, having a coffee and chatting in Dunbar then once she left, I drove to another castle, Dirleton Castle, another one hit with the problem of falling masonry so I was only able to get to one part of it and could only walk round the rest which was a shame as it looked really interesting.
I loved the different colours of stone in what would have been the kitchen.
One of the ovens.
An amazing dovecote - can you imagine the noise in here when it was full??
It was just as big again as in this photo - this is only the top part - it was impossible to get a proper picture of it all.
Then I drove back to Cove Bay and caught the last of the sun before it dipped behind the cliffs. I pretty much had the place to myself - only a few folk there who left around teatime so I was there till 8 p.m.
I was hoping to do a lot more writing when I was at the cottage but discovered that was a tad ambitious so was just content with updating my diary every day instead :)
On Saturday I drove to North Berwick for the boat trip I'd booked up out to Craigleith and Bass Rock but couldn't get parked anywhere for miles because it was so busy. I only had 20 minutes to find somewhere and obviously had to factor in time for walking back to the harbour in the 20 minutes so in the end I desperately parked on double yellow lines which weren't obstructing anything, hoping I might be lucky for the time I was on the boat. Nope. Parking ticket fluttering on the windscreen wiper when I got back so the trip ended up costing me £80 instead of 30! It was lovely though - nice and cool on the boat and I was glad I sat in the middle as those at the sides got soaked with the sea spray!
Craigleith had lots of very cute puffins - I was struck by how small they were - for some reason I had thought puffins were as big as penguins - and how fast they could flap their wings - up to 400 times per minute - they can achieve flight speeds of over 50 miles per hour. That's pretty impressive. I don't know if you can make them out here - they're pretty well camouflaged.
Bass Rock was next - home to many gannets but also housed a castle at one time which became a prison and a chapel plus a lighthouse. It's not inhabited now.
It was difficult to get decent photos as the boat or other people were always in the way but we did get up close to see the gannets which included some chicks although they were difficult to spot - they were like little balls of fluff. I think there's one in the front centre of this photo for the more eagle-eyed amongst you.
So that was nice and afterwards I meandered around the shops in North Berwick then went back to the beach I had found on Wednesday - Seacliffe Beach - for a couple of hours, sat amongst the rocks and sand, wrote my diary and read my book until about 8 p.m. when it was just starting to get a bit chilly.
On Sunday I spent 3 hours cleaning, hoovering and washing the bed linen - because it's not a commercial let, anyone who stays there has to leave it the way they found it ready for the next person - then set off on my tentative journey home willing the car to get me there. I'd asked Nikki to pop into the house mid week and send me photos of any progress with the decorating - there had been some stressors there - I hadn't used the decorator before so was leaving him in my house the whole week - my spare keys didn't work well so I had to give him my own key - he wasn't very communicative, got mixed up with which week he was coming etc etc, so I was anticipating things going wrong and was much relieved when she sent me a video on Wednesday evening showing the walls stripped and prepared - she was worried it wasn't further on but I was just relieved something had been done and all my furniture was still there😁!
He was just doing it all himself and said the wallpaper was a nightmare to get off so he needed an extra day to get it finished but as I wasn't returning till Sunday, he just worked on Saturday as well and didn't charge any extra which I appreciated.
I'll just put a couple of pics up just now as I haven't got the new carpet yet so once I do I'll show you the rest of it. There's a lot of pattern I know so don't worry about saying you don't like it - I don't mind!
What it was like before.
And now.
It was a big relief to get that done and it's nice to have at least part of the house looking clean and fresh although it shows up the rest - but it also lets me see that it's possible I could get another room painted or wallpapered next year and do the same thing - go away while it's being done - now that I know I can trust the decorator.
So it was a success overall - the only real downside to the cottage was that the signal was really bad there so my connection was dipping a lot which was frustrating - they've deliberately not installed a router or TV as it's supposed to be a get-away-from-it-all place which I understand - but I wasn't quite at the stage of being that cut off from the outside world when I was there on my own. I also use the Internet a lot for distraction when I'm really unwell and to stay in contact with others on the same journey for support so it was disconcerting not to be able to rely on that. Plus I usually watch stuff on the iPad in the evening but it was having a hard time piggybacking off my phone and if I'm unwell I can't read, write or do anything much so programmes are a welcome distraction.
Anyway at least I know that now so if I go back, I can always get a dongle or something to take with me.
I put the car into the garage to get looked at and paid £90 for diagnostics to be run but they couldn't find anything wrong or figure out why it had happened so that was a bust. It's been fine ever since of course but I would far rather have had something pinpointed so that I could have known what caused it and maybe avoided it happening again.
It was nice to have done something 'normal' for a change i.e. go on holiday - my next challenge is getting on a plane one day but Nikki and the kids went off to Malaga for a week 3 weeks ago and their plane was delayed by 3 hours at this end - that really put me off because I'd be exhausted before I even got started on the flight then would still have to have energy to get to the hotel at the other end. However what was encouraging about that was that my brain didn't dismiss it outright - it started thinking about maybe getting a hotel near whichever airport I was flying to so that at least it was working on a possible solution - that's hopeful.
Nikki wants to do something special for Lily for her turning 13 in October (apparently that's a thing now🙄) and was talking about a special holiday - she was thinking about Portugal or Amsterdam - but also the Deep Sea World swimming with sharks experience in Edinburgh which is a bit closer to home! She did ask how many nights I might manage away if I went with them so I tentatively suggested 4 but that we would have to fly from Aberdeen. Today I remembered my passport has just gone out of date so I'd better get that renewed just in case!
I'm hoping she'll go for Edinburgh because I'd manage that and it might also be an opportunity to meet up with Janet (Orange Sorbet on here) - I'd planned to do that when I was at the cottage as Janet stays in Edinburgh but unfortunately we'd both picked the same week to go on holiday and she was in Blackpool with her granddaughters at exactly the same time! No matter - I'm happy to go down there again sometime now that I know I can manage it.
So that's enough from me - I feel you should get a medal if you've made it this far😊 I've finally decided on a colour for the carpet so I'm hoping to get that organised next then at least one part of the house has been updated. By the time I'm too decrepit to live in it, I should have it all done!😁
My last 'proper' holiday was when I went to Tenerife in 2015 with Ian and Margaret, my brother and sister-in-law, which was a mixed experience as Mum had just died the week before and I was pretty unwell. However when Mum was in the nursing home, she had wanted us to still go and I felt safe with them - they were very accommodating about what I could do - they had booked for 2 weeks but I was there for just the first week so they kind of focussed on showing me the island that week and did activities that we could all do. I was very grateful.
You'll remember I mentioned needing to get the wallpapering in the hall, stairs and landing done and the carpet changed. In 2008 when Nikki and I were being shown round the house we were left to go upstairs and have a look ourselves and, pointing to the wallpaper and carpet I remember whispering to her 'they're going to be the first to go'. Ha! I never got round to it after we moved in as the bathroom needed changing first then my health started to decline and then a few years later, my life plummeted into hell overnight so that was that.
Last year I finally got in touch with a decorator and he gave me a quote in January but said it would probably take 5 days. With the symptoms I've got, no way could I cope with having someone in the house all day every day for a week so I asked if we could leave it till the summer, my plan being to maybe take off in the afternoon in the car and stay out for several hours each day to give him peace to get on with it. He had also said he could be partly flexible, start at 12 and work to 8 if that would help which I really appreciated.
That wasn't ideal either though. We don't have a guaranteed good summer in Scotland - it was quite feasible that I could be sitting miserably in a car in the pouring rain all week if I picked the wrong week! So I toyed with the idea of going away somewhere at the same time knowing that would be stressful enough in itself as I hadn't been away on my own for literally years so I wasn't keen to have the two stressors going on together but I honestly couldn't see how this was going to happen otherwise.
Last year my friend Caroline, who is going through the same withdrawal I'm going through, had mentioned her holiday cottage which her family has in a tiny village called Oldhamstocks, about an hour south of Edinburgh - very peaceful and healing and a wonderful place to go to get away from it all - and I remembered this. It's not a commercial thing - they only let it out to family and friends - but she'd said if things ever got too much anytime and I fancied staying there for a few days, to let her know.
So I got in touch, she gave me some dates, I contacted the decorator, he could do one of the weeks, so we put a plan into action.
And in the second week of July it all came together.
Oldhamstocks is tiny - just basically one street as you can see here -
it's about half the length of that going the other way and the cottage is actually the back half of what was originally a church which had been in Caroline's husband's family for generations.
They had converted the church into two cottages, sold the front part and renovated the back part which they keep for family and friends and when they want to get away from it all. It's surprisingly big though - 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, sitting room with dining area, utility room and a conservatory looking onto a lovely sheltered little garden.
This gives a better idea of the size of it - it's the white one.
This is the back as the main door is at the side.
And the back garden which was a sun trap and which I spent a lot of time in before heading off somewhere. There were gorgeous huge raspberries in it which I had for my breakfast every morning😊
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I travelled down on the Sunday, extremely glad that I'd slept ok the night before and found a local Asda where I stopped and stocked up on food for the week. Because it's just for friends and family, you have to take your own bedding and Caroline wanted me to stay in the main bedroom as it was the largest and lightest. However it had a king size bed and I only have a single but she very kindly came down the week before and made up the king size bed for me with her own bedding then I just washed it and left it to dry before I went back home.
I was so glad as that bedroom had lovely views of the hills from my bed.
It panned out pretty well all told - I'm still very symptomatic so that got in the way somewhat but as a first holiday away, it probably couldn't have been a better scenario to be honest. The weather was absolutely fantastic - lovely sunshine every day but not too hot to be outside - I actually had to go to a charity shop during the week to try and grab another couple of short-sleeved tops as I didn't have enough because the forecast the week before had been rain all week then it changed dramatically!
The only thing I had to be careful about was that attractions like castles, museums and the like close at 5 p.m. - I'm still in bed in the mornings but it doesn't impact me so much in Aberdeen as shops are open till 8 or 9 p.m. here - however there I had to remember to get going by 3 p.m. at the latest in order to get to somewhere in time for the last entry and it meant I could only visit one thing per day but that was fine.
On Monday I drove around some of the towns/villages to get familiar with the surroundings and the roads - the coastline round there is just beautiful and there are some gorgeous beaches - Caroline had told me about some of the places to visit so I made a plan that night sussing out what I wanted to see so that I could space everything out and it worked well. Later that afternoon I went down to Cove which has a little bay, only accessible by a long, dark tunnel said to be used by smugglers years ago - that pinprick of light you can see is the other end.
It's a little disconcerting going through it I have to admit - it sort of twist and turns and is very dark for most of it - it wasn't till afterwards I thought I could have used my phone torch to illuminate the way!
And then it comes out into this cute little bay which has some amazing caves - it's not well known so is rarely crowded.
There's a very evocative sculpture there depicting a disaster known as the Eyemouth Disaster, when, on the 14th of October, 1881, a windstorm, the strongest form of a cyclone, hit the coast with a great force and killed 189 fishermen. 11 of them were from Cove leaving their desolate families to live in a place which was a constant reminder of their grief. This is it from behind with the families looking out to sea.
And from the front where the distress is very well depicted on every face.
And then I drove to Hailes Castle which is a ruin so I didn't have to worry about closing times but unfortunately there had been falling masonry so there were barriers all round it and you couldn't explore which was a shame because it looked very explorable!
On Tuesday I visited North Berwick, a lovely little seaside town with several beaches like this one -
and a Sealife Centre which runs boat tours. It also has 'proper' shops - not the shopping mall ones you see in every large town but little independent ones with lovely individual, unusual stuff rather than the mass produced stuff you get everywhere.
And then on the way back I popped into Dunbar - another very picturesque town on the coast - it has a beautiful harbour and a very scenic clifftop walk which I did (in parts) on various days.
And then in the evening I joined the support group I run which had got into a bit of a panic - I normally open and close the room but had got my friend, Sarah, to log in as me so that she could be the host instead and I could have a week off or join if I felt like it depending on what I was doing. That was a good move as it turned out because the signal at the cottage was really bad so the connection kept dipping. However when Sarah tried to log in, Zoom security decided this was dodgy looking because they didn't recognise her device so had sent me a code to verify it - except at that point I was merrily driving back from North Berwick obviously not looking at my phone thinking how nice it was that I was having a break from the weekly commitment of the group, so never saw it! When I pulled up at the cottage there were several missed phone calls from various folk and frantic messages from Sarah but we got it all sorted in the end and opened up half an hour late.
It was quite funny - Caroline is part of this group as well and was on that night too - and so I'm sitting in the conservatory with the iPad on the group in this rocking chair
when something caught my eye and here was A RAT speeding across the patio towards the garden! I don't know if you can make it out here but this was when it came back later in the week (by which time it had earned the label 'cute' because it used to lift acorns in its wee paws and nibble away at them).
I was horrified but of course couldn't register anything because I wasn't sure if this was normal for that part of the world (there's a river not far from the cottage and it WAS the countryside) so wasn't sure how Caroline would take it if I said anything! It was so hard to keep my face calm and I wasn't managing it very well so I got up and walked about for a few minutes trying to calm down. But when I met her later in the week she knew! She said she could tell by my face what had happened but obviously couldn't say in case it wasn't that - it was really funny! (Although not so much at the time ......)
On Wednesday I visited Tantallon Castle which I'd seen the day before on my drive to North Berwick -
There was a lot of climbing circular stone steps which made me dizzy! But produced lovely views from the ramparts.
The rock you see in the water in the background of the above photo is Bass Rock and is a very evocative island, quite prominent from many places along that coast and beautiful when the sun is shining on it.
While I was at the Castle, I noticed a boat trip going out to it and another island and thought how lovely and cool that would be (it was a really hot day that day) so I booked up for that for the Saturday when I got back to the cottage. And on the way back I noticed a private beach off the beaten track so investigated that and made a mental note to come back to that later on in the week as well.
And then Thursday - disaster!
I had gone into Dunbar to visit the John Muir museum - he was a naturalist, author, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist and instrumental in the preservation of wilderness in the USA, especially the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park. He was born in Dunbar in 1838 and the house where he was born is now a museum dedicated to him. He wrote about his experiences, often including amazing drawings in letters and journals like these.
These are some quotes of his I loved.
The museum was in the High Street and I'd spied a couple of charity shops further up so popped into them to get some cooler tops and when I got back to the car, decided to go and finish the clifftop walk I'd started on the Monday.
The car clearly had other ideas and decided it was having a day off thankyouverymuch. The brake pedal went into limp mode which meant it would start but wouldn't go into gear or move and the amber engine light was on. This had happened once before and after 10 minutes it started so I waited but nope - left it for 20 minutes - nope. So decided to go for a walk and hope a longer period of time would help. Nope.
With stress levels through the roof, mentally visualising what I could leave at the cottage and what I really needed to take home with me if I had to take the train home and get the car towed - AGAIN (this was the first long trip I'd done since the car had broken down on a 100 mile journey up to Inverness last September so as well as being my first trip away on my own and getting the decorating done, it was partly serving as a way of regaining confidence in it!!!!), I contacted my breakdown company, one which I hadn't used before (more stress) but was recommended by my sister and within the hour, a mechanic came out and did diagnostics but couldn't come up with anything which seemed relevant. Then he started the car and it moved! He said he hadn't cleared any codes and had no idea why it would have gone into limp mode but as he was from the neighbouring village to Oldhamstocks (had a garage there), he followed me along the main road to make sure I got to my turnoff at least and also that I had his work phone number in case of further problems so that was really kind of him.
But that effectively pretty much ruined the rest of the holiday because I was on tenterhooks every time I stopped the car in case it wouldn't start again. It did it again on the Saturday evening but only for 10 minutes this time so when I came back to Aberdeen on the Sunday, I told my bladder we were doing the journey in a oner (4 hours) and deal with it - which it did thank goodness. I only had half a cold pizza left over from tea the night before so that had to serve as lunch, eaten while driving! It was a shame though as I'd planned to stop at a couple of towns I didn't get to in the week on the way home and do more exploring as it was still lovely weather but I just couldn't risk it.
So that put a bit of a damper on things but on Friday I met up with Caroline and we spent a few hours together walking, having a coffee and chatting in Dunbar then once she left, I drove to another castle, Dirleton Castle, another one hit with the problem of falling masonry so I was only able to get to one part of it and could only walk round the rest which was a shame as it looked really interesting.
I loved the different colours of stone in what would have been the kitchen.
One of the ovens.
An amazing dovecote - can you imagine the noise in here when it was full??
It was just as big again as in this photo - this is only the top part - it was impossible to get a proper picture of it all.
Then I drove back to Cove Bay and caught the last of the sun before it dipped behind the cliffs. I pretty much had the place to myself - only a few folk there who left around teatime so I was there till 8 p.m.
I was hoping to do a lot more writing when I was at the cottage but discovered that was a tad ambitious so was just content with updating my diary every day instead :)
On Saturday I drove to North Berwick for the boat trip I'd booked up out to Craigleith and Bass Rock but couldn't get parked anywhere for miles because it was so busy. I only had 20 minutes to find somewhere and obviously had to factor in time for walking back to the harbour in the 20 minutes so in the end I desperately parked on double yellow lines which weren't obstructing anything, hoping I might be lucky for the time I was on the boat. Nope. Parking ticket fluttering on the windscreen wiper when I got back so the trip ended up costing me £80 instead of 30! It was lovely though - nice and cool on the boat and I was glad I sat in the middle as those at the sides got soaked with the sea spray!
Craigleith had lots of very cute puffins - I was struck by how small they were - for some reason I had thought puffins were as big as penguins - and how fast they could flap their wings - up to 400 times per minute - they can achieve flight speeds of over 50 miles per hour. That's pretty impressive. I don't know if you can make them out here - they're pretty well camouflaged.
Bass Rock was next - home to many gannets but also housed a castle at one time which became a prison and a chapel plus a lighthouse. It's not inhabited now.
It was difficult to get decent photos as the boat or other people were always in the way but we did get up close to see the gannets which included some chicks although they were difficult to spot - they were like little balls of fluff. I think there's one in the front centre of this photo for the more eagle-eyed amongst you.
So that was nice and afterwards I meandered around the shops in North Berwick then went back to the beach I had found on Wednesday - Seacliffe Beach - for a couple of hours, sat amongst the rocks and sand, wrote my diary and read my book until about 8 p.m. when it was just starting to get a bit chilly.
On Sunday I spent 3 hours cleaning, hoovering and washing the bed linen - because it's not a commercial let, anyone who stays there has to leave it the way they found it ready for the next person - then set off on my tentative journey home willing the car to get me there. I'd asked Nikki to pop into the house mid week and send me photos of any progress with the decorating - there had been some stressors there - I hadn't used the decorator before so was leaving him in my house the whole week - my spare keys didn't work well so I had to give him my own key - he wasn't very communicative, got mixed up with which week he was coming etc etc, so I was anticipating things going wrong and was much relieved when she sent me a video on Wednesday evening showing the walls stripped and prepared - she was worried it wasn't further on but I was just relieved something had been done and all my furniture was still there😁!
He was just doing it all himself and said the wallpaper was a nightmare to get off so he needed an extra day to get it finished but as I wasn't returning till Sunday, he just worked on Saturday as well and didn't charge any extra which I appreciated.
I'll just put a couple of pics up just now as I haven't got the new carpet yet so once I do I'll show you the rest of it. There's a lot of pattern I know so don't worry about saying you don't like it - I don't mind!
What it was like before.
And now.
It was a big relief to get that done and it's nice to have at least part of the house looking clean and fresh although it shows up the rest - but it also lets me see that it's possible I could get another room painted or wallpapered next year and do the same thing - go away while it's being done - now that I know I can trust the decorator.
So it was a success overall - the only real downside to the cottage was that the signal was really bad there so my connection was dipping a lot which was frustrating - they've deliberately not installed a router or TV as it's supposed to be a get-away-from-it-all place which I understand - but I wasn't quite at the stage of being that cut off from the outside world when I was there on my own. I also use the Internet a lot for distraction when I'm really unwell and to stay in contact with others on the same journey for support so it was disconcerting not to be able to rely on that. Plus I usually watch stuff on the iPad in the evening but it was having a hard time piggybacking off my phone and if I'm unwell I can't read, write or do anything much so programmes are a welcome distraction.
Anyway at least I know that now so if I go back, I can always get a dongle or something to take with me.
I put the car into the garage to get looked at and paid £90 for diagnostics to be run but they couldn't find anything wrong or figure out why it had happened so that was a bust. It's been fine ever since of course but I would far rather have had something pinpointed so that I could have known what caused it and maybe avoided it happening again.
It was nice to have done something 'normal' for a change i.e. go on holiday - my next challenge is getting on a plane one day but Nikki and the kids went off to Malaga for a week 3 weeks ago and their plane was delayed by 3 hours at this end - that really put me off because I'd be exhausted before I even got started on the flight then would still have to have energy to get to the hotel at the other end. However what was encouraging about that was that my brain didn't dismiss it outright - it started thinking about maybe getting a hotel near whichever airport I was flying to so that at least it was working on a possible solution - that's hopeful.
Nikki wants to do something special for Lily for her turning 13 in October (apparently that's a thing now🙄) and was talking about a special holiday - she was thinking about Portugal or Amsterdam - but also the Deep Sea World swimming with sharks experience in Edinburgh which is a bit closer to home! She did ask how many nights I might manage away if I went with them so I tentatively suggested 4 but that we would have to fly from Aberdeen. Today I remembered my passport has just gone out of date so I'd better get that renewed just in case!
I'm hoping she'll go for Edinburgh because I'd manage that and it might also be an opportunity to meet up with Janet (Orange Sorbet on here) - I'd planned to do that when I was at the cottage as Janet stays in Edinburgh but unfortunately we'd both picked the same week to go on holiday and she was in Blackpool with her granddaughters at exactly the same time! No matter - I'm happy to go down there again sometime now that I know I can manage it.
So that's enough from me - I feel you should get a medal if you've made it this far😊 I've finally decided on a colour for the carpet so I'm hoping to get that organised next then at least one part of the house has been updated. By the time I'm too decrepit to live in it, I should have it all done!😁
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