I set off for Cromarty just after 6.00 on Saturday morning.   While you need to be wary of deer on the road at that time of day it is a lovely time to be driving as there is so much wildlife about, including badgers, foxes and stoats.

After an uneventful 2 1/2 hour drive, I arrived at The Stables in Cromarty - a beautiful building which is now owned by the Cromarty Arts Trust.  It took me a while to lug all my gear up a couple of flights of stairs, but the space given over to the fair was lovely.



I was not entirely happy with my layout but at fairs you just have to make the best of the space that is available to you, and ultimately people just want to be able to see the colours in real life and don't mind too much about how your stand looks.

To the right of my stand you will see some lovely hand painted ceramics.  These belong to the very talented Kira Brown.  As soon as I had introduced myself to Kira she said "where are you from" and so I naturally answered "near Lochinver".  But what she meant was where was I from originally, as she had spotted the hint of South African accent that I still have, and it turned out she was also from South Africa.  Not only from South Africa, but from the same area that I grew up in.  And not only that, but she had gone to the same school!  It is such a small world.  So we spent the weekend reminiscing about school and teachers which we had both had, and about the strictness of the uniform code, and even had a good laugh at how we used to have fingernail inspections at school and if our fingernails poked out above the tips of our fingers we had to get them cut.  And she reminded me that we were only allowed to wear lace up shoes unless we had a letter from our doctor saying we had to wear buckle shoes - it does make you wonder what was in the minds of the rule creators.

The fair ran over the two days of the weekend, and so I spent the night in Cromarty rather than driving all the way home again, and I was able to enjoy dinner at the delightful Sutor Creek restaurant in Cromarty.   It is a tiny little restaurant, but with the best pizza I've had in ages, cooked in a wood fired oven.

This morning I was up early enough to do a bit of exploring, and so I made my way up to the top of South Sutor, a hill that stands at the opening to the Cromarty Firth.   The views were tremendous, and I managed to get a lovely view of the small village of Cromarty with the Cromarty Firth behind:



But the road up to the top of the hill was just as spectacular, with the trees looking glorious in their autumn colours, although some of the trees had already lost all their leaves:



It was a lovely, if tiring, weekend.  Back home for a few days and then off to Edinburgh.  No rest for the wicked.