camping trip in Scotland - tuesday

On Tuesday, it was Gary's birthday. We got up and he opened his cards. After our breakfast, we went into Castle Douglas to get some windbreaker to put in front of the tent and a cooking pot. After we got those we went to get bags of chips for our dinner. After we had our dinner we went back to camp and decided to take the boat out onto the Loch. What a disaster!!! We managed to get the boat off the trailer and into the water, although it almost went in sideways off the winch!! We anchored it down and then Gary carried everyone onboard. It was hard in the water as it was very shallow - we couldn't set off straight away as we couldn't lower the engine into the water. Gary tried to push away using the oars, but it just wasn't happening!! So he climbed back into the water and physically puished us away from the shore. He was quite deep by the time he tried to climb back in, rocking the boat - quite literally!!

By this time the children were quite scared as they though "daddy was going to sink" and "we were going to tip over". We were deep enough by now to lower the engine, but Gary (who was soaking wet by this time) had to climb into the back to start the engine and Sam was upset because he was getting squashed and wet!!

Still it started, and we went for a very brief sail round as we were concerned about getting back ashore. We then had to cut the engine, and lift it out of the water and row back in. Gary climbed out and pushed us back to safety and then we could climb over the boat to shore.

We eventually managed to winch the boat back onto the trailer and went back to camp!!

We had our tea and put the children to bed, the slept through again!!!