Saturday, Feb. 26th

Mr. and Mrs. W and I took a walk along the coastline, looking for fossils and shells(the Helmsdale beach is supposedly famed for it's fossils). None of us found anything spectacular. The shore was made up of large rocks, and getting back to the road was quite the adventure. We climbed over heaps of rotting seaweed covered with gnats, halfway up a steep hill by a little waterfall and then back down, over muddy areas, past ruins of an old stone house, up a hill, past a farm and onto the highway. And we visited a little cemetery on the way too.

The stream down to the ocean had made the cemetery almost an island. I managed not to get too dirty, but I did get stuck and scratched by brambles. It was a very beautiful view, but sadly there was a great deal of trash along the trail and the shoreline.



It wore me out. We walked roughly three miles up an over and down.

Saturday evening we were scheduled to attend a ceilidh in Brora. Now, we learned about this event when asking the librarian about dance events, so naturally we all assumed there would be dancing. It turned out there was no dancing. We arrived at the Royal Marine Hotel to discover a packed room listening to a group of musicians.

To drown our sorrows, we decided to have dessert in the hotel. I had dark chocolate mousse, which was basically like two big truffles. As we were sitting there eating our disappointment away, the ceilidh ended and all the musicians, mostly high school students, poured into the hotel lobby and started an impromptu jam session right in front of us(literally, we could not get out). They were really good. There had to be nearly thirty musicians, and at least ten of those were on fiddle, all playing the same tune with no sheet music in sight.
 

Mr. W enjoying the music.

 

It was a neat bit of culture right in front of us, even if we didn't get to dance.