A Castle on your Doorstep

This is our home for the next three weeks:

So we have arrived to our first HelpX host, they are a lovely young family that live in the Scottish countryside, a small village called Aberfoyle. Oliver and Frances bought Duchray castle (which was built in the 1500's) with the intention of creating a B&B out of it, so our job is helping to get it ready to be lived in by autumn. They have two young kids the oldest is named Florence she is 4 and the youngest is Austin and he is 2, they are quite entertaining with their little english accents. It sounds like we are going to have lots of fun though, Florence wants to take me for a picnic underneath the fairy tree so we can visit the fairies who live there! haha

So we arrived on Friday afternoon, and so far have just felt like free loaders because they would not let us work on the weekend, so we have been eating their food and taking their bikes out but have not done a thing for them. But tomorrow that all changes.
Saturday morning I woke up with a nasty head cold, so basically slept all day long. It was only in Gods good timing that I got sick right in between travelling and working, so it was a nice day to relax. And while I was relaxing Nathan was off being an explorer and imagining the trails that he was walking to be places where kings and queens walked and made big decisions for the country of Scotland. I managed to get out for one little hike and it is like walking in a fairy tale land. This land is just full of rivers, streams, flowers and moss covered trees and we are completely surrounded by mountains with beautiful little lochs (lakes) in between as they call them. Our next door neighbour is a horse that we have named "Nosey" who we bring an apple to everyday.

It is all almost perfect except for the stupid little clouds of bugs that will eat you alive. They are called "Midges"and they come in swarms. They are mini mosquitos, and just swarm around you and annoy you like crazy, they happen to love Nathan and not really bother eating me at all, so we make an excellent pair. 
Today though I was feeling much better after an entire days sleep.  Oliver and Frances suggested we take the bikes out and cycle over to a near by loch, Loch Ard. Which supposedly has a castle on the main island, and can only be gotten to by foot at certain point in the day when the water goes low enough to cross. But they did not mention that the road that we take to get there is just massive hills the entire way! We were pooped by the time we arrived and I did not even go the entire way into the village and we did not make it to see the castle because it was one giant hill into the village and I refused to go back up. So we are saving the rest for another days adventure. But along the way we went past an old aqueduct that was built in the Victorian era and still is Glasgow's and many villages in between's main source of drinking water. Which is crazy!

We got glorious views of the mountains and managed to see some wildlife, such as giant slugs! Which are apparently small in comparison to others that have been seen.
So overall this weekend has just been a continuation of our vacation but tomorrow the work begins. It sounds like we will be mostly cleaning tomorrow, cleaning the windows of the castle and cleaning some of the finished rooms. I am actually excited to do some work tomorrow, not feel like such a mooch and have an opportunity to help these lovely people out. Once we actually get a sunny day we will be doing some gardening, because midges are afraid of the sun so only on warm beautiful days will we be outside but until then we will work on our castle.