Toilet trouble.

We went south for a few days and stayed cheaply in a very nice hotel; there are bargains to be had at this time of year in the north of Scotland. We'd been a bit skinflint and not upgraded the room which you can do for rather little money, bit of a mistake. Anyway, in the morning the toilet broke quite spectacularly with large amounts of water leaking, and me, behind a locked door, trying to prevent a major flood. Fortunately I managed to open the door and Louise helped to stem the flow whilst I called reception who helpfully arrived promptly with a table knife, which was used to turn the water off. We subsequently got upgraded to a very, very nice room for no charge. And it was a bit of a tale to tell.

The hotel was housing quite a number of Eastern European refugees, from Ukraine and Hungary.  Whilst they were being put up comfortably their situation was pretty fraught. Some had a bit of work in the hotel, all were polite and friendly. You have to feel for their circumstances. On Monday morning at breakfast we watched as a mum took her child out for the school bus; that will be tough, for the child, mum and school (which doubtless will have no staff trained to teach children who have limited English language skills).

South there were birds I rarely or never see here, like Red Kite, Tree Creeper, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Blue, Long-tailed and Great Tits.

Before I went away I had a bit of a look around on the West Mainland for things like the Greenland Whitefronts at The Loons, there were 65 and various other bits and bats. I had a good tramp around the 3km patch down to Loch of Harray, and failed to find either Red-breasted Merganser or Slavonian Grebe which was a tad disappointing. As far as Patchwork Challenge goes the 10km from home list stands at 70 species for 83 points (not green) and the 3km patch (green) is at 52 species for 58 points, with Woodcock added today.

Greenland White-fronted Geese.

The day of a big tramp around the patch.