Self Tanning Lotion

So Sunday began the trip to Skye. The original departure time of 12pm was well missed by Christian's lameness and arrival 3 hours late (which incidentally left me to look after a girl I'd never met before, who we were giving a lift to, for 3 hours in our flat), meaning we finally arrived at the car park in the dark around 8. The one advantage of this was that we got to drive through the mountains on the approach to Kyle of Lochalsh at sunset, but then I cocked up all bar one of the pictures at Eilean Donan castle :(.

However, there was a lot of moonlight, so the 5km walk to our little bothy which we would call home for the next 3 nights, wasn't too bad and head torches weren't required. For those of you who don't know what a bothy is - it's basically a little hut with no heating (bar an open fire), water or power, situated somewhere in the mountains that hikers can use.

Ours was situated in the most gorgeous bay, right next the sea and right at the foot of some not insignificiantly sized mountains (The little white hut in the corner of the picture. And fortunately for us, we got the best weather of the year so far. Two full days of beautiful sunshine and just enough breeze to stop you getting too hot on the climbs.

And so, that is how we spent our days - hiking. The first day we climbed ever single one of the 928 metres up Bla Bheinn, which allegedly has the best summit view of all the mountians in Skye - looking out over the Black Cuillins. And the second day, we took an 8 or 9 mile walk around the sea, a big loch over some hills and far away.

Much fun was had by all, we saw some cool wildlife - deer, a golden eagle (pretty darn rare) and some rabbits, some of us went skinny dipping in the river, most of us went in the sea (it was so hot and flipping gorgeous, we forgot about how cold the actual water was), and all of us had the liberating experience of doing a number 2 in the open air (under moonlight was my favourite). It was also encouraging to see my ankles hold up and realise that I am actually fit enough for the 5 peak challenge (more about that soon).

More pictures can be found here

And then I came home to 42 new emails, almost all of which were important and work related. Joys.

Tomorrow is another exiciting day though. My football team have an important cup semi final clash (against a team we beat 3-1 last Saturday) and I'm heading off to Spring Harvest. This is a christian conference that was a large part of my growing up during my formative years and for a time was the only place I could seem to find girls who liked me. I think I went 19 years on the trot, but this is the first time I've been back for 3 or 4. It will also be interesting going with a different perspective - I'm not a teenager, I'm not a student, I'm a 'full-time Christian worker' (whatever that really means), and it'll be fun to approach it from a different side.