Gallivanting and Research

I love getting out and about every now and then, as many of you know from previous blog posts, and dear husband and I had a great day out last weekend over at one side of Loch Lomond. Since it was a reasonably good day, we took a flask of coffee with us to save time and decided to go climbing. Well, it was more of a walk but it was all uphill! Conic Hill is hardly on a par with our famous high Scottish Munros, but for someone who is more used to a walk round our village or along by the river, I knew it would be a test of my fitness, or lack thereof, and we only intended walking up the first part of the path through the forest.

In the end, we kept going and managed to get to the start of the actual hill where we had a view of the loch below. And that was no mean feat, since it was a bit muddy in parts from the endless rain we often have in the west coast. I won't describe it all here, as the other reason for the day out was research for the contemporary novel I'm writing as part of NaNoWriMo, but you can get an idea of it from my photos.

I'd suddenly thought of taking my hero and heroine over there on their first outing together and dear hubby was happy to indulge my wish to see the area again. So I now have almost a whole new chapter written from the day out. And as a reward for our energetic climb, we had a lovely lunch in the beautiful little inn beside the loch!

Yesterday was another day out, for our writing group's annual dinner and prize giving. We went to a local Equestrian centre for an afternoon meeting first, when we each read a short piece of writing on the chosen theme (childhood/school memories this year). Then after the prize giving, we had a delicious dinner with much chatting and some wine. It's one of the highlights of our writing year, as it gives us all a chance to meet in a more social atmosphere to get to know each other better. Many a friendship has been forged within our welcoming group. I was delighted to be awarded one of the cups for winning the article competition, plus a certificate for being second in the poetry competition.

And the busy week doesn't end there as I'm off gallavanting with my good friend tomorrow for coffee and chat. Then it's an annual local Christmas Fair with another friend on Friday, and I expect we will badly need some lunch afterwards, not to mention more chatting. Just as well I'm getting my NaNo writing done first thing in the morning!

Rosemary