My companions and hosts, on the Seil side of the Bridge Over the Atlantic:

It is traditional in Scotland to install boat cabins on the tops of hills (they’re used as hides when hunting haggis):

Tigh Beg is often surrounded by bleating idiots like this one:

Here’s a nice photo of Ruthie:

And here I am, attempting to email copy to The Herald (it only took four attempts):

At Ellenabeich you will find the Highland Arts Exhibition (and an excellent microbrewery):

Inside the Highland Arts Exhibition hangs the work of outsider polymath C. John Taylor:

And finally, especially for Guy, a mostly-rotten sheep carcass:

More photographs are available here, or will be soon. Fans of needless geowankery can have a look at part of one of our walks on Google Maps (annoyingly, I didn’t remember that my new ‘phone has all sorts of fancy GPS features until halfway through our final trek).

I’m off to France tomorrow for ten days, so if you need to get in touch, er… don’t. (Unless it’s urgent, in which case my mobile telephone will be switched on.)

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A good food holiday, specifically.

Highlights included Bob’s Cognac-infused fig and hazelnut crumble, with fruit and nuts both plucked from the branch that day, Donny’s superb courgette and wild mushroom risotto, which induced a coma in its creator, Janet’s cheese gratin, which included the remains of a vast (€39!) block of gruyere, and a collaborative apple and pear tart, with apples picked from the orchard by my own hand.

Thanks to Donny, Janet, Jess, Len, Niamh and Yesten for being there, and of course to Mr. Bob for being such a fine host!

I have an holiday photoset on Flickr, needless to say, though with only a smattering of telephone camera snaps uploaded so far, and a search for the LPM0905 tag should, in the coming days, reveal photographs by all of us. I’m particularly looking forward to Leon’s shots of the Roman amphitheatre at Saintes, taken with his fancy little paper pinhole.

Oh, and something appears to have gone awry with email in my absence - if you sent me anything in the last fortnight and I haven’t yet replied, do get in touch.

The laptop will remain at home, but I’ll be taking my mobile telephone with me, so if you really need to get in touch, ring it.

For a remote taste of my holidays, please gaze upon this pair of giant donkeys, who I will be visiting:

They’re divided up into sets for your viewing convenience: Budapest (7610) contains images captured with my Nokia 7610 telephone, Budapest (Lomo, Black & White) and plain old Budapest (Lomo) probably don’t require an explanation.

Oh, and there’s another fifty-odd photographs awaiting upload. I wonder how I had time to do anything but point a camera at stuff while we were there.

See you all when I get back, unless I can get internet access on my telephone, in which case, there will probably be photographs of stuff like this.

Paul is the only person I know capable of driving a car from Plymouth to Dakar, and also the only person I know capable of neglecting to mention the fact that he was about to do so.

As far as I Know, Paul and his co-driver are somewhere in France at the moment, but they nearly didn’t make it that far. Their Isuzu Trooper broke down before they even reached Plymouth, so they called out the RAC. The RAC man pronounced the car kaput, and then, when he found out what they were up to, gave them his own Vauxhall Calibra, and told them not to worry about the Trooper, as he’d see to it that it was fixed up and sold on their behalf. Well done that RAC man.

I’ll try to bring you more tales from the road as Paul makes his way to Dakar, and will add details of how to sponsor him as soon as I know them.

Good luck P.!

On the way back from Zagreb, Janet and I had a long wait in Ljubljana train station, made longer by the presence of a very scary man with unbelievably dirty shoes, an even scarier man with an impeccable Elvis quiff and shoes held together with gaffer tape, and an incredibly scary man who shouted and sang in his sleep (shoe status unkown). Janet’s photograph of the waiting room door captures our fear rather well, I think.

In lieu of a proper posting about the city, here are some telephone snaps for viewing on Flickr:

• All images from Zagreb, also available as a slideshow
• Images from the Tehnički Musej
• Images from the Hrvatski Muzej Naivne Umjetnosti