Sunday 11 October 2015

Home again

Back home from a wonderful holiday in Scotland.


We stayed in this holiday cottage in Forres, Moray (traditional outside, modern and comfortable inside – highly recommended) and went out from there to different places every day. Enjoyed lots of good, top down driving (top down on the car – not husband or me!), stopped to explore towns and villages along the way, and also managed many miles of walking up and down hills, through forests and along beaches.    

Good news – I finally got to see not one, but two red squirrels, although not in the nature reserves where I’d been looking for them.

Bad news – I was so surprised I didn’t reach for my camera until they had scampered out of sight.

Oh well, perhaps next time …

The only squirrel I managed to snap!
My plan to take a break from writing worked for the first five days, but on the sixth morning I woke up with one of those Eureka! moments. I found myself thinking about a story I’d started but then abandoned years ago. I suddenly realised what was wrong with it and how I could change it. I was itching to start writing straight away but I made do with a few scribbled notes and hoped they would still make sense when I got home.

I didn’t write anything else, but I did gather lots of inspiration for stories and articles everywhere we went. Just hope it’s all safely stored somewhere in my cluttered mind.

The first week back home was all a bit of a muddle. Lots to do, but I think I was still in holiday mode so everything felt a bit strange and took longer than it should. More or less settled into my ‘normal’ routine now – I think!

Hope to catch up with you all soon.

4 comments:

Daisy Debs said...

Only been to Scotland once....definitely need to go back and see more of it and the wildlife there . I was disappointed to not see any red squirrels ...but we did see a nesting pair of Ospreys , wonderful !

Patsy said...

Glad you had a good time and got some inspiration.

Nicola said...

So pleased you had a great time, Linda. Over here in Germany we only have red squirrels (well, where I live anyway). So it is lovely when I visit home and see the grey ones scampering around in the park.

I've been in a muddle all week and can't blame 'holiday mode' :( BUT maybe I can blame the snow, which suddenly appeared this morning. October and snow??? What's that all about?

Have a great rest of the week.

Jan Baynham said...

Glad you had a great holiday, Linda, and that you found some red squirrels. There's nothing like a change of location to inspire some new writing ideas so I hope they materialise into stories once you get back to writing.