Time for a holiday

So, having missed our flight by a mere 24 hours (clearly the time spent teaching 7 year olds to tell the time was wasted on me!) and after a problem-free flight with plenty of films to watch and gin and tonics to drink, we FINALLY arrived in Manchester. Clearly Manchester is not the ideal end point for a trip to Aberdeenshire, but Kev did good work driving us for 7 hours in a hire car, battling the jet lag, to his Mum's in Foggie. Obivously leaving my passport in the hire car after we dropped it off was a bit silly - even more silly that I wouldn't have noticed until we got to the airport on the way back if they hadn't called my parents!
The main event of the trip was of course the surprise appearance at Lynsey's wedding party. We managed to hide all traces of our existence from the house when she came to get her hair done, which was a good move as she did actually search the house. The look of surprise on her face was a picture when Kev walked towards her at the party and it was a great evening - well worth coming home so we could be there.
I don't know if I mentioned in the last entry, but having missed our flight, Emirates decided it would be a great plan to cancel our return flight immediately, meaning that we were unable to book another flight until 10 days later. This left us with gettin gon for 3 weeks in Scotland. It was such a welcome change to have some home comforts and home cooking
(and to be able to cook for ourselves!), but we came to realise that we would really have to plan some sightseeing activities to keep us busy and out of the pub... So began the Socttish leg of our travels. Step 1 - a proper country show. We saw cows (many different kinds), we saw sheep (pinks ones too!) we saw pigs (only 2 though, and I wanted to take them with me..), we saw chickens, we saw horses and we saw tractors. And it never rained. On the way back we visited a castle and went for a walk around a Loch. Proper Scottish.
Step 2 - a proper Highland Games. A new one for me, plenty of bagpipes, highland dancing and hammer throwing. My favourite was the tug of war, because it just reminds me of school sports days! Sadly we missed the caber tossing, which I had been looking forward to all day - memories of getting my year 4 children to toss fake cabers one assembly. Sadly, the day ended in A and E after Kev managed to pour a cup of scalding hot coffee down his hand and take 2 layers of skin of on impact. He thought he'd be fine - however after driving for 10 minutes with him hanging his hand out of the window I decided he was DEFINITELY going. Once the wound was dressed, we went to another castle (ruined this time) with some beautiful views.
We took a few days off from the Scottish tour and caught up with Kev's friends and family as well a couple of evenings catching up with the local pubs. The next real Scottish event was a trip to the Glendronach distillery, followed by a welcome tasting session where we tried 3 different ages. Strangely enough I liked the most expensive one the best...
The rest of the trip was more visiting and catching up with people and a fair amount of relaxing - after all this travelling we really need a holiday! The weekend before we left we climbed a hill with Kev's 80 year old Grandad - quite an a acheivement!
The less said about the trip back the better really as it involved 7 hours to Dubai, 9 hours in Dubai airport, 8 hours to Hong Kong and then another 8 hours in Hong Kong airport, pretty much all without sleep. Unsurprisingly this confused our body clocks somewhat and it took us a good few days to recover. We have now been in Yangshou for nearly a week and are loving it here, we have done so much and met so many lovely people. That will have to wait until the next entry though, as my fingers are beginning to ache! Loads of photos due to go up, but that may have to wait a while.