Image from antsplan on Flickr

Myself and a large group of friends went for a sporadic picnic at Duffus Castle today. I'd heard of the motte-and-bailey castle, just outside of Elgin, and most of the Nairn/Lossie-based people I knew had been - but I'd never been up there.

It's a gorgeous castle with no fees to view it, and we got lucky and had brilliant weather to see it in - the grass was bright, and you could see the sun moving across the yellow fields that stretched outside of the castle grounds. The land itself is huge, with lots of open space considering that only a small amount of ruins remain.

Photo taken from my phone.

Metal plaques across each section of the ruins describe what each area would have been. When a short rain shower hit our picnic, we sheltered in an archway where the portcullis machinery had once been, and now only a hole remained. There was also a latrine just down from the portcullis - a gaping hole pointing down the side of the castle.

'Inside' the castle, the roof is now gone and large chunks of the second floor have collapsed into the hill due to some severe subsidence - the most amusing of these being the latrine from the castle lord's bedchambers, which is now planted in the hillside with a long chute pointing down the mound.

It's a beautiful ruin, without any of the tourist shops and entry fees that tend to spoil historic areas these days. You just need to follow the trail to the castle (use a map, it's difficult to find), and then you'll join a small group of dog walkers, locals and tourists out enjoying the beautiful scenery. Nobody thought anything of our group sitting out on the grass with a picnic (and a few families had the same idea), and we were left to ourselves to play frisbee and ball games across the mound and flat lands surrounding it.

If you're out exploring the Nairn/Elgin/Lossie/Morayshire area and the weather is nice, don't miss your chance to take a look at the ruins. The area is open to the wind and rain, so carry a warm jacket in case the weather shifts. Bring food and friends to get the most out of it!

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com

It's November, which means NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) has begun - where hundreds of thousands of people try to write 50,000 words in one month. Not something that works for me, because I'm really bad for going back and editing my work before continuing on, but it's still a cool event.

With Halloween now over,  I'm kind of annoyed I didn't decide to dress up as a Hunter zombie from Left 4 Dead (pictured in this post)... but the idea only occurred to me five minutes ago so I'm a biiiiit late. Next year! In the spirit of Halloween, here's a creepy and beautiful comic.

My actual Halloween was spent out Geocaching - basically, treasure hunting using the internet or an Android phone/iPhone to find certain hidden items using clues and GPS co-ordinates. There's a fair amount in Nairn and a lot in Inverness, and it's good fun wandering around in the dark, searching nooks and crannies for the 'caches' and praying the police don't ask what you're up to (because 'internet treasure hunting' may not sound convincing).

Finding a geocache is a lot of fun, though - and we had two successful findings, thanks to bringing along two friends who were like geocache snifferdogs. Awesome snifferdogs.

Then the temperature dropped to 1°C and I, being terrible at handling the cold, started handling the cold terribly. So I was very glad to get to bed!

It's all horribly geeky. So I love it.

One last thing - the Nicholson Institute, Stornoway's only secondary school, decided keeping an autistic 18-year-old in a 'cage' (a fenced-off area of the playground) was a smart idea. I'll just be shaking my head over here...

Originally posted by Emma Maree Urquhart on EmmaMaree.com