"The dogs need to go out."

" But I'm all cosy and settled on the sofa."

"Oh come on, we'll just catch the last of the light."

A very large sigh followed by a very grumpy, "S'pose so."


Just look at the world we found ourselves in. Thank you Lenny and Effie, for being such demanding dogs!

JH

Geoff and I had been asking ourselves the question for months: What would a holiday cottage have to be like for us to go ‘Wow’ if we were the visitors? Had we missed anything? Would our guests be able to really relax knowing they had everything they needed (we nearly forgot the potato peeler, but not the corkscrew!). Now we were about to find out what our first guests thought. Here’s what Fiona and Chris had to say:

“We were visiting Arran for the third time, and on this occasion chose to stay near Blackwaterfoot rather than the east side so we could enjoy the sunsets. To say that we felt we had dropped lucky is something of an understatement.  Green Brae is in a dip down a short track from the island’s perimeter road so you don’t hear any passing traffic.  Every time we glanced up at the view from the kitchen or the lounge we had no choice but to stop and take it all in.  Sheep and their lambs called to each other and Highland cattle and calves mingled with them in the fields only feet from our door with the mountains rising behind. How relaxing can it be?

Green Brae is a very high-end, high-specification holiday home. The master bedroom was gorgeous. It had silk curtains and luxurious sateen bed clothes.  The warm dining kitchen has a huge pine table that you can sense has been part of a family’s lives for very many years and the contemporary units house virtually everything you could need, including dishwasher and washer/dryer.

The best beach (sandy, long and very quiet) is a 2 minute drive from the barn and there are some beautiful forestry walks close by if mountains are not your thing.

We enjoyed our stay so much that we postponed our ferry booking – we didn’t want to leave but we have pledged to be back!” 

Well we did have a perfectly reasonable DVD player, BUT I felt it needed a serious upgrade. So, installed fresh out of the box today a very nice 5:1 Surround Home Cinema System which I have personally tried out this afternoon with one of my other half's least favourite discs "Top Gun" (I do do culture as well, honest).

Hi, at the top of this page you can see the pair of us out on Blackwaterfoot beach making the most of what is proving to be a ravishing summer. Watching the gannets dive down through a faultless blue sky, pierce the surface of the sea and disappear into its depths, then surface a few moments later with their catch, is an absolute gift. There have been many moments: a sea otter twisting and curving in the shallow water; a monarch stag watching us from only a few feet away; a pod of dolphins giving us a leaping show the length of the bay and returning the day after on their way back to..where? Closer to home there is the family of highland cattle in the next field: Mum, Dad, sulky adolescent lying apart and tiny one. Really. Never seen anything like it!

Arran is a friendly place. Lots of warm welcomes. Then there's that slow pace of island life. It doesn’t mean you’re never chasing your tail in frantic circles, but ‘unhurried’ does seem to be the default setting here. Watching the sun set over Kintyre with our dogs and a glass of wine outside the Kinloch Hotel with ‘Mull of Kintyre, oh mist rolling in from the sea’, (if you’re of a certain age), playing somewhere in the back of your mind is a good reminder that being here is something special on a hot (yes hot!) summer evening.