fluffymark | ARDGOUR HOUSE

A whole week of

ardgour_2006 wonderfulness just happened. Ardgour House is a huge old mansion house hidden deep in the pretty Scottish Highlands, filled with a million bedrooms (or so it seemed), a swimming pool, a sauna, a billiard room, breathtaking views of snow-topped mountains and foamy waterfalls and (best of all) 22 wonderful exciting people to share the love with. *squeeee*

We’d been looking forward to this for a very long time indeed.

mirabehn and

evil_nick booked Ardgour House for last week at the beginning of last year. The day before we went, I was practically bouncing off the walls in excitement. A whole week in a pretty and old house with lots of my favourite people! Yay! The journey there is long with lots of changes. Starting at the crack of dawn, we set off on start of a series of trains and buses, with

cassielalone and

casby. We almost got eaten by Forbidden Planet in Glasgow, but the prettiness of the Highlands attracted us onwards. A cute small Finnish creature was scooped up onto the bus at the airport, and we headed for the Mountains and Lochs. The Highlands have few roads, and a road closure meant a very long but delightful detour around parts I’d not seen before. The bus driver noticed us squeee at every pretty castle and building we saw, so started being a tour guide and telliing us interesting stuff about everything. The mountains got bigger with more SNOW on top, and after a few hours of this joy we emerged from Glen Coe and were deposited at the Corran Ferry, where we located various others enjoying the delights of the local pub, and there was much hugging and a large selection of whisky. I’m not a huge whisky fan, but being in Scotland, I indulged while we waited for the ferry. The first of many ferry rides. I loved the ferry, but I always like ferrys, even if this one is a quick 5 minute ride across the loch. It was free for foot passengers, and I could have ridden it all day (just try and stop me!). We landed at Ardgour, and there were lovely people with cars to welcome us, and after a small ride past a pretty lighthouse we turned into a pretty gateway down a long weaving driveway buried deep in old mossy trees, and emerged from this to see the mansion of Ardgour House, overlooking the loch, with a WATERFALL cascading down the mountain behind the house. There were many greetings and hugs.

Ardgour House itself was huge and fun to explore. Every room was full of old paintings and other ancient fixtures and fittings. Ancient musical instruments, sewing machines, mangles, and other wonderfulness. There appeared to be some fixation with antlers, for they were everywhere. We charged around the house piggyback looking at everything and going squeeee lots and lots. Somehow

cassielalone and myself had landed the largest bedroom, complete with a HUGE MAHOGANY FOUR-POSTER BED. Which at one point in the week was decorated all with fairy lights and looked very pretty indeed. Fantastic view of snow-topped mountains from the windows. It was simply perfect. Yay!

The week had several planned activities, both indoors and outdoors. Outdoors-wise, we wanted to see all the local pretty bits of the Highlands, of which there were many. At Glenfinnan we visited the monument and the pretty Loch Shiel there, and then headed for the pretty railway viaduct (of Harry Potter fame) and

medieval_bunny and myself proceeded to climb it, all the way onto the railway line itself, somewhat illegally. The viaduct is shaped in a most pleasing and picturesque curve as it crosses the valley, and makes for stunning views. The Hiking High-Kings

atreic and

smhwpf planned a lovely walk in Glen Coe, which was supposed to be a lovely stroll around a pretty mountain. This almost turned to woe, as the mountain was a lot larger than it looked, and the nice path quickly vanished and was replaced by a huge big and very wet bog. Us few brave hikers tromped onwards and upwards and filled with the power of a whole giant bar of Kendal Mint Cake we were rewarded with spectacular views of Glen Etive and the surrounding pretty mountains. We topped two mountain passes, and almost reached the snowline ourselves. We were most pleased with ourselves, and totally exhausted. Midweek was

mirabehn‘s very special daytrip, as we drove west, west and more west down the Ardnamurchan peninsula (where I went last year), visiting Castle Tioram again (this time on a really lovely sunny day), the Loch Shiel Hotel (amazing food and a bar serving Moniack Mead, my favourite drink) and then a hair-raising adventure in

strongtrousers’s big green car of joy down the road-of-doom to Ardnamurchan point, to be the most west people in the universe ever (or so it seemed). We even drove to Portuairk and said a nostalgic hello again to Tigh-na-Cladach cottage, our home for the holiday last year. It was all as pretty as I remembered it being, and was joy to see it all again.

Of course, the indoor events were special and enjoyable and brought the group much closer together. We had fun readthroughs of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (very very silly indeed) and also of The Hobbit, the latter of which I was Gollum (reprising the role from the LOTR readthrough-of-doom many years back) , and for once I was extremely happy in how I did it, and it seems many others were too. Most impressive event was a freeform roleplay that

the_alchemist and

verlaine created specially for the group called No Holds Bard, a murder mystery with characters based on Shakespeare characters. Initially I was terrified by the prospect of having to stay in character all evening, and the lack of script, but somehow it all just worked wonderfully just as it was supposed to do, and was a huge success. I loved our fairytale party, were we all dressed up as fairies, and there was storytellings and

atreic's very exciting treasure hunt (imagine a large group of fairies running up and down around the house looking for clues and you get the idea), and lots of lovely chocolatey and lovely food. Mmmmmm. A huge banquet was prepared one evening, with an indian theme and real indian recipes, and we stuffed ourselves silly and still failed to finish that we had enough food leftover for the next few days. Yum yum yum. And there were also many other goings-on, games of shakespeare charades, poker, bridge (first time I’ve played in years!!), munchkin, settlers and also snooker on the huge full-sized table in the billiards room. Lots of anime was watched, and lots of Katamari were rolled up. And too many little special yet important things too numerous to mention here. When we got all exhausted from all these exciting activites we relaxed in the warm swimming pool and the sauna, where our cares, clothes and some peoples inhibitions somewhat floated away. Ahem.

Am sad that the week had to come to an end, and it was heartbreaking to hug everyone goodbye, especially the lovely

isobell, who I may not see again for a long time. Aside from one major mishap, which was saddening, everyone got on really well and the group bonding and chemistry created a huge feeling of love for each other, and I miss everyone already. Wah! *heartbroken sob*

Photos, entirely of the outdoor prettiness, are now up on my gallery. They are THE PRETTY, so go look at them!

I’ve not read LJ in well over a week, and my friends page backlog is so long it’s scary, so please please point me at anything I should see. *nods*