We went on holiday last week to Scotland. Stayed at a nice B&B near Fort William. We found out while we were there that we were near where they did alot of the filming for the Harry Potter films. We went and found the huge Viaduct but didn't go on the steam train going over it. Its a day trip and we found out later that it is booked up pretty much a week in advance at the moment due to the films and the kids being on holidays.

To get up to Scotland we spent the whole day in the swealtering heat driving in our little car. As soon as we got there the weather changed and we had lots of rain. We heard on the news that scotland recieved more than its average rainfall for August in 48 hours. Ade bought a raincoat and I got some waterproof trousers and we went for walks and went waterfall hunting. They were quite impressive with all the rain! Despite the waterproofs though it was raining that much that we were still getting soaked and kept heading back to the car and the B&B to dry off.

We went funyakking (which is like white water rafting but in two man boats known as divorce boats) since we were already getting wet. That was quite fun, we only fell out of the boat once.

Then on Tuesday I got stung by a bee. That wasn't very nice, I've never been stung by a bee before and wasn't sure what it was at first just that it hurt very much. We were sitting on a bench in town watching this band that were playing in the street (the first time I think that it had stopped raining) and i just put my hand down on my lap and i think the bee must have been sitting on my lap and thought that i was trying to squash it or something. We went over to safeway to see if they had anything to put on it and the people there told us to go over to A&E as it was over the road and they didn't know what you could put on it. The nurse at A&E sorted me out. I still had some of the sting left in which was why it was hurting so much. So for future reference for bee stings the best thing to do is to scape the sting out with the edge of a credit card and put bicarbonate of soda on it. Oh and vinegar for wasp stings.

Then on Wednesday we went walking in the rain again and my mobile ended up in the bottom of Ades bag in a pool of water from where the water had soaked through the bag. So that died. Mark at work has now lent me his old mobile to put my sim card in until i get a chance to sort it all out so its now working again.

Now you think that would be enough for one holiday, but no things come in threes they say. So on Thursday we went mountain biking. That was really fun. I've never done any off road biking before and its wicked. We went on a massive bike ride all around the forest, down hills and rough tracks, it was wicked. We got back to the hire place and decided to just go round a little loop bit nearby and thats were I fell off going rather fast down a hill. It looked really difficult so I was going to go slowly but some guy at the top told me to go high on the bank where it went around a corner. He didn't tell me that was how you go faster! So I lost control of the bike. My loving, caring Adrian described the crash as like out of a cartoon! Something about flying up in the air and back down behind a hill. I just remember thinking as I came off this is going to hurt. Luckily I was wearing a helmet so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I vaguely remember my head scraping along the floor at one point. This medical student came running over to me to see if I was alright and I got up a little scraped and bruised thinking wow amazingly I'm alright. I even carried the bike back down the hill. It was only later when I was having a shower at the B&B to get all the grit out of my arm that I realised that my arm was stiffening up!

We ended up going back to A&E - twice in one holiday! I think everyone had been out that day as it was the first nice weather that we had had. When I went in with the bee sting there was no one there. On Thursday however there were quite a few, a lady had badly twisted her ankle walking, a little girl had fallen off a slide, everyone had gone out and injured themselves. Good weather is bad for you up there I think.

So now I'm stuck with my left hand for a few weeks. My writings getting better, it now looks like a five year olds rather than a four year olds! And everything is taking longer than usual even this!

The worst bit was getting back from Scotland. Our little car is a little bumpy on the road and with that and the vibrations you get in cars on the road it aggrevated my arm all the way home. Its rather a long way to Scotland. We ended up getting back on Sunday not saturday after staying in the worst B&B ever near the lakes.

So you might get the impression that we didn't have a good holiday but surprisingly apart from the mishaps above we had a great time. The lady who ran the B&B we stayed at was really lovely. She even bought us some mugs with scotland on as a gift because she thought we were not seeing scotland at its best because of all the rain. And for breakfast she cooked us different things most mornings so that we could try some haggis, cooty dumplings and tatty scones. It was great!