Month: August 2025

Highland highlights

stitchesoftime1 Comment

I have so enjoyed being in this part of Scotland for the summer. I love the gentle forested hills, the sparkling rivers, and the stunning coast with its layers of misty blues.

I will find out in a few days where my contract will be for next year. Fingers crossed it is here, as there is so much more to explore, but anywhere in Scotland will be fantastic. 

I have spent some more time in the local village of Aberlour recently, firstly doing the walk up to the Linn Falls. This takes you past the distillery, and you can just get a glimpse of it through the trees.

You can see one of the huge copper stills at the back of the distillery, as always the smells are amazing.

The village itself is very pretty, it is a planned development built in the 1812 by Charles Grant, and named after one of his sons.

Its full name is Charlestown of Aberlour, and there is a smaller village just up from our campsite, named Archiestown, after his other son.

As well as being the site of a great local Co-op,  butchers and deli, it also gives you access to the river and the Speyside Way.  There are many of these beautiful bridges over the river here.

Like many of the places round here Aberlour hosts a Highland Games, and I was lucky enough to be able to visit, as I have had weekends off.

It was amazing, all of the surrounding towns and villages support each others’ games, so there were dance, athletic competitors, and pipe bands from the local area. This meant there was a great attendance and atmosphere, and thankfully fantastic weather.

My favourite part was definitely the pipe bands, there is just something about pipes and drums that touches your soul, and the drum majors were particularly impressive.

The Highland Dancing, and ‘heavy’ competitions such as tossing weights and hammers were also wonderful to watch. I can finally say I have a seen someone toss a caber, and it is very impressive!

I have also been being creative during my time off, and have painted lots of stones to decorate the campsite. These are some of the types of campers that we have had visit this summer, and they are on display near our facilities block.

I got chance to do a little bit of caravan upgrading as well, with fablon covering the kitchen area. You can see the original surface in the second photo. I have also bought new fleeces and cushion covers for the colder evenings. It is starting to feel very autumnal here now. 

Sadly my trip to Dingwall, that I wrote about last post, did not end well. It  was the week of Storm Floris, and although I got there OK on the Friday, the weather was bad again on Saturday, so I decided to come home, getting a split pole in the process of taking the tent down.

I have another welfare weekend planned next weekend, at one of our coastal sites, so hopefully that will go really well, and I can share the photos of that, along with some more coastal trips in my next post. 

Meanwhile I hope you are having as much fun as I am. Thanks, as always for visiting, and putting up with the less than frequent posts!

Thoughts on Darwin and dandelions …

stitchesoftime2 Comments

I will explain the post title a little later on, but here is a summary of my first couple of months at my new site assistant role. All is going very well, although for some parts of the job there is a lot to learn.

Ours is a relatively small site, only 50 main pitches, with a tent field if needed to give us an additional 20 pitches. Most of our visitors so far have been motorhomes, campervans and caravans, but we are seeing more tents as the season progresses.

It is a site with lots of beautiful trees, and I have spent some time working out what they all are, with the help of a new plant finder app, Flora Incognita, which is brilliant.  We have Birch, Scots Pine, Spruce, Rowan, and Bird Cherry, as well as some gorgeous Crab Apple trees with wonderful lichen growth on them near Reception. 

There are also lots of plants, mainly in beds that have needed a lot of tidying up. The site was closed for 7 months over winter, so most of what myself and my colleagues dud initially was trying to get the site looking neat and tidy again.

I forgot to take a before picture, but I took seven wheelbarrows worth of weeds out of this bed by the facilities block. It looks so much better now and we have Comfrey, Lupins, Columbine, Dog Roses and Geraniums blooming there now.

We also have a large stone bed near the entrance that we haven’t even tackled yet, with gorse, alpines, and lots of rosebay willow herb.

There are three of us on site, and neither of my colleagues enjoy gardening, so I have taken responsibility for the flowering parts of the site, as well as sharing in basic ground maintenance. We have done some new planting as well, and put up hanging baskets and repainted and replanted existing areas.

There has also been lots, and lots of weeding, which brings me to the title of the post. What is a weed, except for a plant we don’t actually want in that place? I have taken out so many things, including many dandelions. Every time I do I think about Darwin and his theories about adaptation.

Dandelions, plantains, clover, buttercups and daisies grow really well here, and yet some would consider them weeds. It is such a pity, and I am very tempted to let the all grow. Obviously they do really well in this environment,  are very well adapted to live here. It would certainly make the job a lot easier, rather than constantly trying to remove them.

However, it has to be a balance, between keeping the grass neat and tidy, and having it more wildlife friendly. Long grass is difficult to pitch tents on, as it holds moisture, so we do a lot of mowing. I am now much more confident with the ride on mower, which has been very exciting to learn how to use.

The site was a prisoner of war camp in WW2,  housing both Italian and German prisoners, and later a resettlement camp for Hungarian and Ukrainian refugees.

All the old Nissan hut bases are still here, some are used as hard standings for caravans and motorhomes. Others are partly overgrown, which means you have to  be very careful when mowing!

It has been a brilliant first season, and has gone really fast.  Only six weeks until I finish. I will find out in early September where I will be next year, as I may be moving sites. Wherever it is I am hoping to still be in Scotland as I love it so much. Fingers crossed!

Next weekend I am off to stay at another of our sites, a bit further north at Dingwall.  We get two free nights camping at any other site every month, so we can have some r and r and also to see what other sites are like. I will be back as soon as I can with more updates, until then have fun and thanks for visiting.