Typhoons

We woke to find snow on the hills around Golspie and even some slush down to sea level but after a morning of wintery showers the sky cleared, so we....

....walked to Drummuie at the southwest end of the town, where the sun had burned the snow away, and then....

 ....up into the forestry on the slopes of Ben Bhraggie.

A forestry walk isn't my favourite, particularly if its coniferous forest as there always seems a sad lack of wildlife in it - the occasional chirrup of a bird and, as happened today, a rare, fleeting sight of something a little larger, this time a beast with a long bushy tail. It wasn't a squirrel as it was too big and, in any case, even though they ought to be there, we haven't yet met a Ben Bhraggie squirrel, red or grey.

The best that can be said for forestry walking is that, if one is lucky, there's the occasional glimpse of a view - here looking down onto Golspie High School and the centre of the village.

Today we had the additional frustration of being able to hear, but not see, the fighter jets that were circling out over the Dornoch Firth, though we finally found a clearing where we could see them, at least two Eurofighter Typhoons, probably based at Lossiemouth.

There's very little in the way of air activity here. We rarely hear or see a passenger plane flying over and we've only heard fighter jets briefly on one previous occasion.