Round Up Of A Fantastic Few Days Away!!

Well back safe and sound, and again have to thank good friends Pete Walkden and Kate MacRae for making the trip so memorable and as I said to them this morning "Life Changing", they have been great and gracious hosts, it has been a real treat for my birthday, set off at 7.30am this morning and only on the road for about twenty minutes travelling along the A9, when up ahead I saw three Jackdaws and one very large juvenile Herring Gull on some road kill, travelling at 60 miles an hour and glancing behind me there was no chance that I was going to be able to slow down (too much traffic), so I was praying they would move, the Jackdaws did but the Gull was a little slow and took off going forwards and did not get any height, all I could do was wait for the impact (anyone who knows me will tell you I will do all I can to avoid hitting anything), the impact was horrendous and hit my drivers side taking out my windscreen wiper, I had to travel through a snow storm before I could pull into services and have a new one fitted, luckily that was the only incident except for hold ups from J22 to J19 on the M6 when I was lucky to travel at 20 miles an hour, I am able to come off at J19 and still get home comfortably so that's what I did, only took eight hours with three stops and as well as the snow storm the winds were very high and my little Clio does not take kindly to high winds but she battled through and got me home safe and as always surprises me how well she does on fuel consumption on long journeys. A bonus while catching up on e-mails, blog etc.. I heard two Tawny Owls calling to each other, so opened my dining room window (which looks onto the embankment) to listen to them only to have one fly the whole length of the embankment from right to left straight by me, what a treat and what a welcome home to my home patch!!!