91热爆

Yup. This is an unapologetic blog praising Calmac, and why not? We are very quick to criticise them when they get it wrong.
We went away for the weekend (a Coll winter weekend is Saturday until Tuesday) for a house-warming between Fort William and Mallaig. The colours on the hills were amazing, and it was nice to see somewhere else with far too much water. We set the alarm for 3-45 am Tuesday morning and drove to Oban to join the queue of 16 vehicles heading to Coll. I stayed awake long enough to hear Captain Billimore (a legend in his own lifetime) welcome us aboard and briefly mention winds up to force 6 (a bit of a breeze, nothing to worry about). I did notice it seemed a bit rough, but I travel better lying down with my eyes shut so I stayed that way until the announcement came that we weren't going to land at Coll. The trip between Coll and Tiree is normally the roughest but it seemed OK. We tied up at Tiree and drove off the ferry so they could shuffle all the vehicles about, drove on poised to get off at Coll, and sailed straight past the green buoy and back to Oban. Apparently winds were 40mph, gusting 45, and not safe to dock. Meanwhile those mobile phone-literate people had been bothering the Calmac head office, so we drove off the boat, round the block and queued up in lane 4 to get back on the boat. We weren't guaranteed the wind would have dropped enough to let us land, but with the carrot of a free trip to Barra and South Uist if it hadn't I think most folk risked it. It was calm enough up the Sound to have a late lunch, chicken and leek pie, I might stick to the steak pie but it was alright. Out of the Sound it got rough, I reverted back to a horozontal position and listened to the waves breaking over the front of the boat. The direction must have changed enough because we docked OK and I was straight off the boat and back to work at 6-30. I spent most of the evening swaying about as the floor wouldn't stay still, even lying down it is possible to get sea-legs, and suffer back on dry land! So thank you to the Barra and South Uist folk, who didn't grumble at the extra journey time (or at least, not in my ear shot) and a huge thank you to Calmac for being able react to circumstances and adjust their schedules. Otherwise we would have been stuck in Oban until Thursday with nowhere to stay and shopping getting warm.

Meanwhile, here is a canape recipe, and very fiddly it is too. Take 100 cherry tomatoes, cut in half and take the seeds out. Take time out to discuss which way to cut them in half, it is very important when the intructions have come from someone who isn't present yet, but will be in time to notice we'd actually done it wrong! Put some pesto in each half tomato (my job), put half a tomato on a cocktail stick, then a piece of mozzarella or feta (I prefer mozzarella) and then the other half tomato. 99 more to do. This proved to be a great way to make some new friends but I am not doing it for a living. I ate several at the housewarming and they were 'a good thing' and stopped me eating too much shortbread, but probably weren't that effective at mopping up the fizz (it was a high class housewarming).