Rest Day 1 🤣

After a disastrous day yesterday, our amazing friend Joyce who we met on the 2017 crossing (and her amazing husband husband Allan), completely rescued our spirits with their kindness and hospitality. I can not imagine a more relaxing or enjoyable day. All of the stress and disappointment faded away, and we completely forgot about the dilemma we have been dealing with.

We were collected at the Perth train station, around 11:15 and headed back to Joyce and Allan’s beautiful home (named Assynt) in Scone, Perthshire.  I can’t do justice to how beautiful it is here, but their house and property are an idyllic Scottish country home with a gorgeous garden. We were in awe. We had a great visit, a delicious lunch, and then Joyce took us to Scone Palace. We decided to tour the grounds and leave the palace tour to another time, since it was such a beautiful afternoon. Again, it would be difficult for me to do it justice in words, but in summary it was just gorgeous! We had a leisurely and peaceful stroll through all of the gardens, and finished off with some fun going through the maze made from beech trees - twice!

JM The Bruce!

Palace Cemetery

Not The Chosen One…

Maze From Above

After that we headed back home for tea and cake, and some more relaxing and visiting. Allan had a lawn bowling match in a nearby town which he took off for, then Joyce, Amanda, and I walked into town for dinner. It was my first fish and chips of the trip, and it did not disappoint!!

Amanda And Our Hero, Joyce

We walked back to Joyce’s place after dinner and she toured us up the road so we could walk a bit longer. It is an unbelievable area and I can’t imagine how nice it would be to live here.
After our walk we headed back to the sun room for more of a visit and to wait for Allan’s return. When Allan got home from his match (don’t ask him how it went 😜) we had a whiskey and chatted for another couple hours. I don’t think I have laughed and smiled so much in one day in forever!
As we sat and talked I couldn’t help but be amazed that here we were in Joyce’s sun room, having this amazing experience, after having only met her by chance on the 2017 TGOC. Her kindness and generosity helped Amanda and I both in 2019 on our SNT and TGOC hikes, and now again she has saved the day by lifting our spirits on this current crossing attempt. We will always be thankful for all of this, and hope that we might one day be able to return the favour in some small way. Thank you so much, Joyce. We love you!!
Tomorrow we will be heading back to Glasgow in the hopes of collecting our packs on Friday morning at the airport. Everybody please keep your fingers crossed for us... I will post an update if we get any new information.
Thanks for reading, and goodnight!!