Tuesday 12 04. Glen Affrich to Dornoch.
Awoke to big female red Deer outside. We needed to use the facilities, she was between us and them! So we bravely crept out, keeping Hamish between us and her. Then slowly moved out from the shelter of Hamish, then she saw us…. And put her head down to continue grazing. We crept forward by three fairy steps. 
She looked up. Saw us. Coninued grazing. Three more fairy steps from us. She looked up and continued grazing. At this rate it was going to take us half an hour to reach the necessaries and I wasn’t sure my bladder would last. Luckily after one more stand off she decided the forest was more fun and very elegantly leapt off.
After breakfast Hamish drove out of the Glen to Cannich, where we took showers outside the Community Centre (toilets but no outside water). Then Drumnadrochit for water from the tap outside the visitor’s centre (hurrah) then set off to Dornoch, as we’ve never been.
Stopped en route at a tiny village (Evanton? Previously Dummond?) for lunch and remembered we needed to post the wills. Found the tiny post office where the only customer made conversation by pointing out a local postcard featuring a grand semi-detached house where local controversy occurred due to one owner having brown window frames instead of white. However the planning officer was trounced when our host found an Victorian version of same postcard clearly showing the house with all ‘brown’ window frames!
When our turn came the ancient post office lady kindly saved us a pound on our postage by folding our envelope over and sticking it down with her own sellotape to make it a smaller size. Half an hours entertainment for the price of an envelope!
Dornoch, lovely wee town, where our Howff was by the spectacular beach. Short walk into town where Lisa’s unerring nose lead us to the Dornoch House Hotel.
A wee gem of a bar with sofas, fire, real ale, fine selection of rare and unusual whisky with whisky book library and soon to be installed distillery of it’s very own….. a bar to while away a very pleasant afternoon in. So we did!
Tea back at the beach with kite surfers for entertainment, jolly good they were too in the gale force wind. Found another leak, so garage contents were removed but didn’t result in finding the source. Compensatory walk along a wee bit of the beach.
Big wind continued overnight and so Alastair ventured out to ensure Hamish was very comfortable, Lisa slept soundly gently rocked by the very wind that had A freezing his bits off. Lisa had another attack of claustrophobia, with no recollection whatsoever. Alastair had a rather sleepless night!
