Colonsay

We finally got to go on our long awaited holiday to the Scottish island of Colonsay.  To say I was a little bit excited about this holiday is definitely an understatement.  I can't remember having been as excited about a holiday for a very long time.  Unfortunately this made it very hard for the actual holiday to live up to my excessively high expectations but we did have a lovely time.


Our cottage was quite small and very cold, but lovely - and we spent a lot of time playing cards (albeit sometimes wrapped in blankets), reading, knitting and eating lots of naughty things.  Oh yes! I ate LOTS of naughty things - bread, jam, cheese, salami, pizza, crisps, sausages, burgers, and lots and lots of cake! (more about cake later........)  The diet really took a very welcome holiday but even after having a curry once we'd come home I managed to only put 3 1/2 lbs on over a week and a half of being very bad indeed!

The beach next to the cottage was beautiful - known as the best beach on the island and there were two ways down from the cottage.

The first was along the little road

and the second was more "cross-country" and involved a steep climb up the rocks - but the route had been signposted by some previous visitors..........

There was a little stream to cross to get onto the beach itself and sometimes we used the stepping stones but other times we just waded through.

We took the children on as many walks as we could get them to go on (not many!).  I think they were rather put off by the epic walk we did at the beginning of the week to visit an isolated beach - along with half the other holiday makers it seemed!

But by far their favourite activity was visiting "our" beach

- especially if they could run and jump in the sea in all their clothes...........

next year I'm going to look into getting wetsuits!

The cows enjoyed the beach too.

Another top activity was visiting "the cake house"......... Daisy was very excited to be nearly there..........

Okay, she was actually jokingly running to meet Fred but the cake house was at the end of this bit of road.

There were a couple of signs saying "Cakes for Sale" and when you approached the cottage there was this sign gaffer-taped to the door.........

..........so we opened the door and found this HUGE box FULL of the most delicious cake along with a box nearly as full of money!

We had a barbecue one evening with the children wrapped up against the cold and the midges (although fortunately we weren't really bothered by midges actually biting us - I don't think it was warm enough for them)

I also celebrated my 40th birthday while we were away and had a lovely day with lovely presents - including a very special one that was posted to me on the island.............

...but you'll have to wait until another day to see what was inside (as I haven't taken a good enough picture of it yet and it really deserves to be photographed well)

...........and I even had homemade cake and a card from the family staying in the cottage next to ours - such a kind thought.

So we had a lovely holiday - I just wish we had been there longer - and after all my weeks of searching for the perfect sock knitting pattern to take with me I wish I'd taken a different one as ended up ripping it out on the ferry home!