Autumn in Aberdeenshire

I am taking full advantage of this being my last autumn in Aberdeenshire for quite a while.  Our plan has always been to use up our holidays whilst in Singapore on seeing places we'd never seen before, so although I love this corner of the world, I wont be visiting for a little while.  

Although I've moaned about moving about so much in such a short space of time, most of the places we've lived in have been wonderful.  It's quite odd that this place is the cheapest of them all and its the 4 Star hotel.  We're in quite a predicament living in Aberdeen where hotels, even the worst of the worst, are expensive and you have to normally go over thirty miles out of town to get a place that will accept pets.  

When we thought we'd have to move down to Exeter for a little while we found loads and loads of lovely, inexpensive places that would accept Daisy dog.  However, we are here and I am making the most of it!

I love my walks with Daisy around the grounds.  We've been walking around the perimeter of the gardens, and then down to the walled garden.  There are still lots of apples on the trees and I'm finding lots of good conkers.

It's not all rest and relaxation though.  Today we managed to get some sweets to our old neighbours and visit my friends parents.  The weather turned horrible in the afternoon so we had to fly about the countryside in torrential rain.  My friend Catherine lives on the other side of the country, so seeing as we can't get there to drop of presents, and seeing as I thought I would be visiting and therefore bought heavy things it worked out quite well we could go visiting.  We bought some cakes from the baker and headed out to their cosy home.  Daisy came along too of course and played with their dogs and then we took them all out together.

I stayed chatting for longer than I should have as we had to rush back to the hotel as I was meeting Natalie and Holly there for afternoon tea.  I was glad they were able to see the hotel, but it was such a pity the weather had turned so awful.  The afternoon tea was actually not at all like it was the first time and such a disappointment.  It was so different, plain and made up of leftovers from breakfast.

Although it was upsetting that I had invited people to a place I thought would be nice and it was not, the afternoon was so lovely.  Holly gave me a wooden westie ornament and a really nice card.  Mark got a whiskey glass and some traditional Scottish cookery books (although I do think they'll be handed to be with bookmarks in them).

When I get back to Aberdeen I am looking forward to getting all my muddy clothes cleaned and looking good.  The one bad thing about hotels is that I can't just get my laundry done and all this walking has left me looking like a tatty scarecrow!