Well goodness me...

... *she says brightly* - it's been a while, hasn't it? Everyone OK I hope? All present and correct? I've been mithering for a while on what I should do with this. I mean, I think it sort of lost its direction, but that's a bit daft after all, it's had a change of direction or several in the past and always survived the experience, hasn't it? Maybe the answer is just to let it meander along to itself for a bit and see where it wants to end up. I've always kind of felt that without pictures there's no point in posting - after all it *did* start life as a photo blog...but chatting with some very smart, sensible and lovely chums over the weekend, we all reached the same conclusion - that actually first and foremost we write for ourselves...NOT FOR ANYONE ELSE! So here I am, ready to ramble about...well, whatever. I think there will more often or not be photos...I mean, more often than not I've been taking them, so it seems silly not to show them to you, too!

So - after my fabulously exciting summer, where did I go from there? Well, quite predictably I think everything went a bit flat and empty feeling for a while. It wasn't just me - a good pal had a simultaneous "isn't life shit" few weeks back in October/November too - which would have helped mightily if we'd done the sensible thing and actually talked about it...but of course we didn't.  Of course the bottom line as both of us have since realised is that really, life isn't shit at all, it's jolly good fun mostly, but after the sheer amount of fun and fabulousness we both had through the summer, it was inevitably going to feel like nothing exciting was ever going to happen again when it all finished! Ah well, you live and learn, and then you start all over again with plotting and planning exciting things! The winter has certainly had some fun crammed in to it as well - lots of time spent with lovely friends both in Lincolnshire and elsewhere. MrEH and I went up to the Hebrides for a week over New Year - just amazing to see the islands at a different time of year and we planned our travel to incorporate the "beach landing" on Barra, too.

Bit of a dream come true that - it's been on our list for a LOT of years! Also confirmed 100% for me that I love flying regardless of the size of aircraft too - this little 15 seater was the smallest thing I'd flown on but I loved it! Half the reason for going over was to ascertain how we found  the place in the winter months - we were wary about lack of daylight ion particular, but in fact it proved to be none too bad. The light during the day on a bright day is just incredible - absolutely beautiful, so you can forgive the fact that there's not much of it until 9am!

The weather bothered us a lot less - albeit we experienced a good mix in the week we were there from snow, beautiful sunshine as you see above, and some very heavy winds. (That's very heavy winds of the "don't go out in this unless you actually need to" type - which up there really means that you should avoid going out!) Interestingly though there was no weather during that time worse than we've encountered before with one exception, which was icy roads - something we were greeted with on arriving on Uist. We know already about the potential for days and days of strong winds and driving rain, so that came as little surprise, and snow is actually relatively unusual. All in all it was a successful visit, confirming to us that actually, in the long term, the Hebrides would suit us quite nicely.  We're off up there again soon, too - looking forward to a fortnight staying in the same place as last year. There is also another "Island" trip to look forward to as we're joining a large party of friends on Lundy for a week. They've been after us to go with them for years but this is the first opportunity we've had.

Once back from both of those trips I will be back into the thick of the airshow season again pretty much immediately - lots planned again this year, Claire and I have had our heads together plotting trips pretty much since the Reds released their display schedule last month. Looks like once again we will each be doing a few shows that the other can't manage but hopefully the vast majority we'll be together. All in all, we're looking forward to another fun-packed summer, whatever it may bring!

Robyn