Staffin Dinosaur Museum and Dinner at Edinbane Lodge 7th March

In the torrential rain, we were the luckiest of ducks today, as we had been invited to an exclusive tour with Dugald Ross (a friend of Alan’s) owner of the Staffin Dinosaur Museum at 10.30am today. The museum is still closed to the public at present, but we met Dugald at the Blue Skye Gallery and had a chat about the youths I had reported to the Police, and he had been called in to look at what they had taken. From there we got the invite to come for a tour.

I was up at 5.00am well before Vince for a change and working on my photos and blogs when he finally surfaced around 7.00am. We did a few routine chores and also caught up with two of our brood and their respective children via video call, Ellie and Aria (4), and Christina and Amy (8), Connor (5) and Piper who is having her birthday today turning 3! It’s always wonderful to see the Grandies they just make my heart melt!

Before we knew it it was 10.00am and time to head down to the Museum. It was amazing! Dugald shared so much of his background and knowledge about the pieces on display and we were so impressed that many of them are the actual fossils not just replicas.

I was even surprised at the wealth of places on Skye to find such items, not just at the major sites everyone knows about - it really is the dinosaur capital of Scotland.

Dugald is about to release his book “Jurassic Skye” I’ve already put in an order for 5 copies, once for each of our Grandies families and one for ourselves - I will get Dugald to sign the copies with each of the children’s names inside - what a great souvenir to take home for them from Skye.

He will be presenting as part of the Scottish National Heritage event on the 19th March (coincidentally my birthday) in Staffin. He gave us the contact to try to book in, so I hope there is still space as it sounds great! You go out on site to Duntulum and Staffin with Dugald (founder and curator of the museum) and Dr Neil Clark, curator of paleantology at the Huntarian Museum in Glasgow. Then back to the Staffin Community Centre for lunch and a talk about the The Skye Nature Conservation Order and Scottish Fossil Code as well as other delicious dinosaur stuff - can’t wait! And of course there will be the launch of Dugald’s book - where we will get our signed copies! Very Exciting!

We spent a good hour or so with Dugald at the museum which is housed in an early 1900s black house building, which was a dwelling house and before that the local school house. It was amazing to see inside one, as we have only seen them from the outside previously.

Then having said our farewells we were off to Portree to the Co Op for the weekly food shop - many of the shelves housing toilet paper, soap, hand wash and hand sanitiser were still bare. They had also run out of kindling (but we picked that up on the way home through Uig, at Rankin’s).Surprisingly they had shampoo labeled as Aussie! I bought a box of chocolates and some flowers to give to Ian and Gill as we were catching up tonight, and they had invited us to sleep over.

We had a booking for 7.00pm at one of the top restaurants on Skye, the Edinbane Lodge to have a kind of detestation menu, sampling many courses with a “wine flight”.

Alan the crofter popped in for a while in the late afternoon for a chat and we arranged to go with him on the 20th March to the sheep dog sales.

It was a bit of a rush to get ready after Alan left but we made it only 10 minutes late, at 6.10pm to Ian and Gills, and of course Rhumdog!

They surprised me with an early birthday gift (as they won’t be here for the 19th) of the first of Ian's porcelain pots he threw after many many years - what a wonderful gesture and keep sake to treasure.

We all went in their BMW to the restaurant as we would catch a cab home. The staff were lovely and we had an absolutely fabulous time. Vince and I treated our new friends to the meal and wine flight as they have been so marvellous to us. They insisted on buying pre dinner champagne, the cab home and shouting us breakfast at the cafe in Carbost tomorrow. The food was great and the wines were perfectly matched. My only trouble was later in the evening on a return trip from the toilet the room started to move a bit in my vision and the sea of tables and chairs before me appeared to be an obstacle course for me to get through to our table right down in the back corner - but happily I made it!. The last drink of the evening was Amaretto on ice which I had ordered, but given my obviously oncoming sudden inebriation I thought I better leave it.

I don’t do well in the back of vehicles at any time (car sick) and in my drunken state it was fairly tragic on my stomach, but I managed to get through it unscathed, and after a brief visit to the loo I was straight to bed - didn’t even brush my teeth! I heard someone ask “does she need a bucket” - to which I replied I was fine, the room had stopped moving once I lay down and I was out like a light! Night Night!