Road trip

We were back on Tuesday from a 2 week roadtrip with Logan. And it was pretty cool. 

3 days to travel North, 1 week on Orkney, 4 days to travel back South. You might think Ayr to Wick/Thurso in 3 days, even worse 4, is ridiculously long, but we were travelling with a 4.5 months old baby and had to follow 3 important rules:

• Never have the baby more than 2 hours in the car seat
• Give him 2 hours to kick about after 2 hours driving
• Avoid driving more than 4 hours in a day 

So our first stop was Cromarty, with a 2 hour stop for lunch at the House / Falls of Bruar just North of Pitlochry. Pretty mainstream touristy but great food as always (if you can find a table) and lots of shops to go round spending time. There is even a great walk up to the Falls which we wanted to show Logan, but it had rained pretty heavily and the path was unfortunately flooded right from the start.

Cromarty is a wee gem of a town. The weather was lovely the next morning, so as we would only leave a place when Logan was ready for his first nap (so that we would drive when he was asleep) we took a long walk to explore and I have to say it is right up there in my list of 10 prettiest villages in Scotland. Logan DID NOT like the change to his routine. He DID NOT fall asleep on the 15 min drive to the Anderson Restaurant and stayed awake, gurning or crying, throughout the whole meal and we had to make a quick escape without dessert as we felt he was disturbing the other patrons too much. His first night in a strange bed was not good either. He kept us awake most of the night. We had to take him in our bed for the first time ever for him to at last fall asleep.

The first morning. Looking as if he'd let his mum and dad have a good night. NOT!

The second night wasn't much better. We were up in Caithness and the great thing was that we had dinner at the B&B, so were able to put the baby monitor on. Again he took forever to fall asleep! 

He loved the ferry across to Orkney, outside in the wind watching the sea!! And once we were there he settled very quickly into his new routine. I suppose we didn't move for 1 week so it helped a lot. 

 We had a great time with him visiting all the archaelogical sites, going to the Isles of Hoy for a hike to the Old Man, and of Rousay to explore Midhowe and Taversoe Tuick. His Auntie Rona joined us from Aberdeen for 3 days and it was brilliant having the extra help and someone to babysit. Orkney was really good: the weather was stunning for the whole week, apart from 2 sites there weren't that many tourists, and even if we're not into archaeological/historical stuff we really loved it.

 Old Man of Hoy in the background. 

 The Stones of Stenness in the background

 With his auntie Rona on Rousay

We came back via Durness, Gairloch and Fort William (Corran) and by then we all had a good routine of driving at nap times, taking breaks fo 2 hours to let Logan kick his legs about and getting to our B&B early enough that he could have his bath and last feed at normal times. He would still be awake all the way through dinner in restaurants, but at least he knew the drill and was very well behaved!

The next test for him is my going back to work on Monday. Mornings only fair enough, but it's going to be a big change for both of us...