After a fruitless fishing session at The White Loch, we met up with Liz and Duncan from Fountain Forestry and then set off home from Caithness to Cambridgeshire, arriving ten hours later after the 600 mile journey. We had started our journey in fine and sunny weather and ended it in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm.
I was awake at 5.30am, still marvelling at the length of the early summer daylight hours up in the far north of Scotland. We had opted to eat breakfast first and then go quite early up to the White Loch to see if the trout were rising. We left a note on the entrance gate for Liz Kensington (the District Manager for Fountain Forestry who I was expecting to meet there) to say that we were down at the loch and to meet us there. No luck for us as the trout were not rising and we did not have time to wait for them to do so, but Liz came with Duncan, the forester who looks after our plantation, and we covered all of the important topics; fertilisation, pest control, sporting management and other things.
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Nigel and I agreed that they were both attentive and competent and we decided that they should fulfil our needs and, in particular, arrange a sporting week for us in October amongst the Fountain Forestry estates in Caithness. They had brought a packed lunch which we dipped in to and then Nigel and I set off for the long journey back. We left at 11.30am and at first were held back by the traffic on the windy roads and then by fog through the rest of the Highlands after which made better progress as I engaged Nigel in conversation about the business and tried to teach him the benefits of corporate planning and thinking clearly about what he was trying to achieve.
This was aided by a telephone call from the car to his office revealing yet another crisis had occurred in his absence. We were so intent on talking about this that the hours passed quickly, Nigel speeded along the roads, and we found ourselves home at 9.30pm - which is only ten hours and very good going for a distance well in excess of 600 miles! We had started our journey in fine and sunny weather and ended it in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm, the latest of two whilst we had been away. Home and unpacked and rather late to bed.
Diana was less than welcoming to me this evening, making out that she was expecting me to be away for a week rather than four days. However, the girls more than made up for it and were very pleased to see me and affectionate. I stayed up very late gutting and storing the trout and also preparing our two latest acquisitions for adding to my collection.