Seaview at Repose

As I mentioned in my last post we were greeted at Seaview by Liz Macgregor and shown around the house. The lovely cottage has three rooms downstairs and two upstairs plus large cupboard spaces both upstairs and down.

Downstairs there is a lovely sitting room with a view over the sea and the village church down by the sea below. The church belongs to the Free Church of Scotland - often known as The Wee Frees (not to be confused with Pratchett's Wee Free Men) a Church with deep roots in Gaelic speaking Scotland, which decided to merge with other Free Churches to form the larger (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland. 

The next downstairs room is a kitchen with cooker (gas hob, electric oven and grill), fridge freezer, washing machine with tumbler and a dishwasher, plus, of course, tables and cupboards full of crockery and cutlery. The kitchen window has a similar view to the sitting room.

The third room downstairs is the toilet and shower room, next to this is the large cupboard which includes deckchairs, a screen, a picnic basket and recycling bins for paper, plastic and glass.

Upstairs is the master bedroom with one double and one single bed, again the window has a lovely view over the church and harbour below.

The second room has a single bed and Velux window. The upstairs cupboard is a wardrobe large enough for all our suitcases and our clothes. 

Having shown us around Ms MacGregor showed us her little gifts to us of a homemade cake, fresh milk, six eggs and a bottle of wine. She then warned us about the storm and gale force winds expected overnight.

Soon the views outside became limited by the rain beating on the window, perhaps the best representation on this is the weather apps view!

We emptied our cases began to wash our clothes, unlike previous travelling holidays we don't need launderette visits as we have our own facilities here, and only a further week (actually six days) after we leave here for which to have clean clothes.

This is the third time we have rented a property for a holiday, we stayed in a house in Padstow in 2007 and in Skipton in 2010. While both were nice enough neither had the comfort and facilities of this house. In particular the kitchen includes every kind of cooking equipment I can imagine, even two peelers!! It also has five saucepans of different sizes, and baking stuff. In addition there are small amounts of stuff we might not have thought to buy - salt and pepper, thyme (we had bought Oregano) which made our arrival easier as we didn't have to rush out for things we had not thought of. For example, though we had bought them on our way here there were tea bags, washing powder, washing-up liquid and dishwasher tablets already in place - excellent.

Tonight we cooked and old favourite Penne con Ragu, or at home it is Penne, here we had only been able to find Fusilli, but that worked just as well. The butcher had minced some stewing steak for us, as he didn't have minced beef, but this added to the richness of the sauce. On opening the 400g bag of Fusilli I was surprised to see a resealable bag - 400g is our regular pasta portion for the two of us, I suspect this is a little more than other people use!

The size of the meal caused us an additional problem about what to serve our dinner on, at home we use some lovely wide pasta bowls (with rims) but it was clear that the plates here weren't large enough for our portion size!  We found two ceramic baking trays that were large enough, so this may not look as elegant as it could but it was absolutely delicious.  We had fruit for dessert. 

After dinner we sat and listened to the rain beating against the side of the house and the wind blowing hard against it. We felt very lucky to be in such comfort in such challenging weather.

The bed was also very comfortable and I was asleep within a minute or two of getting in at 10pm.