The drizzle is upon us. Tulips and daffodils are weighed down with the weight of wetness, and I am holding my breath for new seeds to sprout. Spring again, and with it the whimsical weather, taunting and beguiling us to ‘cast a cloot’.

John and I have been sitting reading our books; his is a giant tome about the climber George Mallory and the conquest of Everest, called ‘Into the Silence’. Mine is ‘Sister Carrie’ by Theodore Dreiser. It is about the ‘fall of a waif to the arms of the wolf’ set in Chicago in 1889. Morality, the threat to the established order, it could be Paris or London. I like it, so far. I love his description of Carrie listening to a piano being played, a short song, wistful and tender, and her mind wandered forth on faraway journeys and returned with sheaves of withered and departed joys.

Enough melancholy. We have just returned from a foray up to the wild wet wilderness of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. The rain fell horizontally, the single track roads skirted mossy ravines of every conceivable shade of green. So many images of wetness and moss, of boulders glistening in amongst the dead bracken and winter grasses.

Primroses nestled beside brown frothy burns and we saw the pale swathe of blue of early bluebells. Our first day was on the Morven Peninsula, and we revisited the little house at Drimnin that caught our fancy way back in 2007. It sat perched on a hillside overlooking the sound of Mull, and grey lag geese waddled in the field in front, almost tame. The house has since been done up, with a new roof, and strange outbuildings added. There was little charm, and I missed the old stone and the invitingly curved conservatory at the front. But the hills of Mull were clear and the views as beautiful. I am sure the house is warmer now and more habitable.

We played about in the fairy hole in the rock, imagining ourselves characters from the ‘Outlander’ series. I touched the stone with two hands and shut my eyes and waited to be hurled backwards two hundred years to 1742.

T’was not to be. We returned to the rather charmless Loch Aline Hotel and found ourselves instead in a dwelling that has had no updates since 1960.

Whilst nursing a pint in the bar, a local canvasser for the upcoming elections came in. The two resident drinkers and the barman assured her that everyone would give her their vote. She asked if there were any issues that were bothering them.

‘Aye, the community council, we want rid of the whole bloody lot of them.’

‘Right, well, I will make a note of that, and what about other issues, like roads for example?’

‘Aye, you can just bury the whole lot of them under the road, that would do nicely.’

And they went back to their drinking. The poor lady left quietly, clutching her pamphlets.

Because we had come so far, we decided to have a look at a house for sale way up on the western point of the Ardnamurchan peninsula.

It was quite cheap, and we had idle thoughts of a whimsical nature. The winding road, the rain, the mists over the mountain tops seemed to make the journey feel quite dismal. We eventually arrived at Salen, and saw the wide beach, the scattered houses, the hard unyielding land that had broken so many a crofter in the past. Ahead in the mists were the islands of Muck and Eigg, and holiday homes were dotted amidst the crofts sporting white paint and BMW cars parked for the weekend.

We doubled back and saw our possible retreat. It was a house that needed a lot of help. I climbed up to the bedroom and looked out at the lone pine tree outside and heard the rain on the tin roof; there was a warmth there, the walls were three-foot-thick, and on a clear day the azure sea would be seen, past the tumbling fields and tussock grasses.

John, much more practical, saw the failing structure of propped up floors, dodgy staircase, the broken fireplaces, the lack of heating. I saw tiny rooms, small windows. Maybe? … but no. Maybe we shall return in another ten years and find it all immaculate, built from another’s dreams.

It was quite lovely though, the mountains framed with spring gorse,

the skies heavy with rain, the mosses and lichen, and the frothy waterfalls all calling us back. We did revisit the walk in the Ariundel Oakwoods, and by then the rain had cleared and we could see the giant Ben Resipole soaring in the distance. We didn’t see any wildlife though; the deer were in hiding, the pine martins asleep and even the highland cows were seeking shelter in the lea of the hills. Otters and seals were not evident, only two oystercatchers strutted manfully along the seaweed-clad shoreline.

By contrast on our way home we drove south through Glen Coe and the sun shone, the peaks were clear and we relived our last year’s adventure of walking the West Highland Way. There was where we slept beneath the shadow of Buachile Etive Mhor, there was the Kings Arms Hotel where we called in for breakfast, and there was the devil’s staircase that nearly broke me.

It is good to be home, it is good to sit and drink tea and watch the eider ducks out on the Firth of Forth and read American Literature, and watch the drizzle and know that my feet won’t get soaked going through wet grasses when I go out to get the car. As I said in a previous blog, ‘Ardnamurchan in the early spring’ written in April 2015, it is so good to know that such places exist and even better knowing that it only takes a few hours to reach them.

My other trip this month was to visit my third little granddaughter, Hazel. I arrived in Wales and got a huge cuddle from Bonnie and then I met the sweetest little bundle.

My time there was lovely, Natasha and Leo making me so welcome, and we visited Dyffryn House and gardens where Bonnie played hide and seek and Natasha and I sat in the sunshine.

We climbed the sand dunes at Merthyr Mawr and all the time Hazel was cuddled into Tasha’s chest in her sling. Later we repotted the house plants, read stories, and just passed the time. I hated to leave, the time was so precious.

Here is the quilt I made for Hazel.

Back home again, little Miss Darcey is blooming like a spring fairy.

Suddenly she is all action and has now graduated from ‘NO’ to a Sean Connery style ‘Yesh’. We look after her on Thursdays, so it is quite full on when it is just us in charge. She is easily pleased though, and has such a happy disposition. Her main love is dancing. She immediately takes off at the slightest melody.

So that is it for now. I think it is time for a brandy and some salt and vinegar crisps. A perfect end to the day, I am so thankful not to have been transported back in time to the 1740s. Indeed, I am glad not to be back in the 1890s. Our present world is scary, changing and in the hands of power-crazed schoolboys, but for the moment I am happy to be here. Life as it is, is good.