Grandtully Station Campsite, Pitlochry, Perthshire.

We took the opportunity this morning to lay in, as the next three mornings require an early 7 am start. Whilst preparing to leave, a large motorhome reversed in next to us. He's going to reverse into that rock.

Oh, he's hit that rock! Don't look. Better the rock than his wife who dutifully took her place in the blind spot behind the van when her husband moved to another space to assess the damage.

Talking with the two lady members of staff at the visitor centre about reptiles in the area resulted in us being shown the resident slow worm (living under a small square of roofing felt behind the centre). There's a blast from the past, when everyone had one in their back garden, or so it seemed.

We were about two hours drive from Grandtully, a drive that thanks to a road closure ended up taking twice as long. The drive through the eastern Cairngorms mountains was long, hard and interesting.

After Marge summited the Glenshee high mountain pass at 650 metres we stopped to take a breath. The snow was almost now non existent and we could easily see the ski lifts standing idle. In the early 1960's the road was straightened out to by-pass the devil's elbow with its notorious two hair pin bends. Prior to this, buses used to drop off their passengers who had to walk this section.

Right Marge, rest time. No driving now until Friday. We will stay at the Grandtully Station campsite, (yes an old railway station) until Friday. The next three days we will be packrafting. Angela's anxiety is high about having to do the self rescue, but she'll just have to bear in mind that the thought of doing something, is often worse than actually doing it.