Thursday night in the moonlight we zoom up to the top field just below the summit crag of Creag Bhan with Mark, Kirstin, Andy, Jane and the kids on the quads. It's at least 5 below and very crisp and clear. The moon is just waning so still pretty full and shining in across the Sound of Gigha, where the navigation buoys flicker red and green. The dozen fish farm cages half a mile offshore give off an eerie surreal glow from the 10Kw underwater light cluster below each cage - submarine fairy lights for silkies-and we can see the lights of Macrihanish twinkling almost 20 miles south. We race downhill through a spray of spindrift on sledges expertly improvised form lengths of curved fish farm pipe joined by 12mm ply boards. We sledge by the blue moonlight hitting 31 mph down the 300m run downhill into the fence along the bottom of the field. This is Gigha's longest clear slope. Then we get towed back up again, each sledge clipping on to a karabiner tow line off the back of the quad. After an hour or so we're all getting weary- even Amanda has almost had enough fun. Andy has put a video "Gigha's got Snow 2" on YouTube.
Yesterday - Christmas Eve - showed signs of a slow thaw then it was freezing hard when we left the Hotel to come home just after midnight Then it rained overnight and stripped away the white crystalline world we had just got used to after ten days. Outside skeins of geese are honking across the sky. But it's a GREEN Christmas. The rest of Scotland is still white but we are just waiting to see what vagaries of weather are brought by the kink in the jetstream.
No animals were harmed in the making of this card.
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