An Opportunity to Start

April 06, 2025

I think the more popular my accounts became on other social media apps, the less I documented my life on film. Instead going for the quicker, instant iPhone photo. It’s a shame… I’ve had a good few tiny vehicle homes over the past few years and I wished I’d started some sort of series on them from the beginning.

There’s no use crying over it now though, when I can simply just start.

My current home, the 90s Eriba caravan, is in a new spot on the Isle of Skye, and with a fresh start, comes the opportunity to start a new series.

Coming soon.

Maida's Cottage

March 30, 2025

Through the chaos of preparing for a move and a job change for my husband, we decided to disappear west for a few days to a little cottage I found listed online. A bit of a nightmare to find (we eventually realised we had to squeeze through a tiny gap between a house and a big horse box and we’d emerge onto a track behind) but once you’re there, you feel completely alone.

An adorable little home, quaintly furnished with homely touches. These types of places are my favourite to stay in… not overly curated, not trying to perfect in any way. An honest, traditional house. There was no tv, no wifi, barely any phone signal. Just the cottage and the hills behind it.

The couple of days we spent here were a breath of fresh air, although I did notice two things…. Fox followed me around like a lost puppy. He’s always lived in vans which are really just one room, so he’s always able to see me. In the house, he’d follow me from room to room, not used to being out of eyesight. And, houses are too hot. I always say this when I visit family. Their houses are always bloody roasting and I feel like there’s no fresh air. I’ve climatised to a colder way of living, where there’s always a draft coming in from some random air vent and honestly, I like it. I find houses can be really stifling now so I spent a lot of time perched in the corner of the sitting room, writing on my laptop or making notes of my thoughts into my notebook, with the window wide open. I always like to feel half outside.

We didn’t plan anything to do while we were there… just wandering, driving back roads, seeing where we stumbled. I spent a lot of time whipping my camera out of my backpack, photographing coastal buildings and aesthetically-pleasing rocks.

A Bothy, A Boathouse and a Loch

March 24, 2025

At the end of February I turned 36. I’m not a huge one for celebrating birthdays, but I asked for one thing this year. To be taken on a little day out where I had to plan absolutely nothing. I didn’t want to know where we were going, what needed to be packed, nothing. I wanted to be an empty headed passenger princess.

As someone who is the designated organiser, this was an absolute dream.

We jumped in the car and drove the snow roads through the Cairngorms, stopping to take a few photos along the way (the two at the very end of this post). I always think it’s a bit of a cliche Scotland image to take a photo of a passing place sign but to my defence, the backdrop was very nice and the light was hitting it just right and it’s actually a wind warning sign so it’s ok.

A backpack full of snacks and rolls of film, I was told to follow a gravel footpath that went past a wooden cabin and a stone outbuilding, heading towards the loch.

Coming from the micro climate of freakishly warm, calm weather in Moray to the chilly, breezy weather in the mountains was a bit of a shock to the system on the first section of the walk, but after getting to the destination (a holiday lodge owned by the royal family, with a stone bothy at the rear) the sun was out in time for the walk back and we were sweating.

The bothy itself is just an outbuilding of the main lodge, tucked away behind it. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know it was there. I did want to have a look inside but there were a couple of funny-guys having a picnic in there, shouting ‘BOO’ at us when we peeked through the window. Safe to say I thought the place was haunted for a second.

We plonked ourselves a little further up by the river for our own lunch spot, sitting in piles of pine needles while Fox played with branches and begged for bits of our sandwiches.

A pretty good way to spend a birthday.

“ Glas-allt-Shiel is a lodge on the Balmoral Estate by the shore of Loch Muick in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In its present form it was built in 1868 by Queen Victoria, who called it Glassalt, to be what she called her "widow's house" where she could escape from the world following the death of her husband Albert, Prince Consort of the United Kingdom. It is now a category B listed building owned personally by Charles III. Adam Watson considered that "Glas-allt-Shiel has undoubtedly one of the most spectacular situations of any lodge in the Highlands.” - Wikipedia