We've had a great week. Thank you for this super opportunity Tunnell Trust!
We look forward to coming up to Scotland to perform again in the future and setting up more tours. Watch this space!

Ps - I've just been made aware of this review by Kirkcaldy Music Society
-  scroll to the bottom to view

West Kilbride

We arrived at 12.30am last night and met our host Lynette, who is brilliant!
Today is our last concert day on the tour.

We spent the morning in West Kilbride Primary School playing two concerts to the infants and juniors. The concerts went down well and there were lots of enthusiastic questions and responses, including - 'why do your eyebrows move so much when you play?'...

We had a few hours off in the afternoon and for the first time all week were blessed with incredible weather - so we took advantage of this and went to nearby Largs on the seafront, had fish and chips:

And ice cream at the famous Art Deco Nardinis 

Then
found the most amazing hidden gem: Kelburn Estate 


Which has over 3500 acres of land and forest to explore (noted and appreciated that the Scots aren't so uptight about overdoing health and safely regulations, so we could freely explore)

And a 13th century castle recently redecorated by Brazilian Graffiti Artists.

Our final concert of the tour went very well. Loved the hidden touches of fairy lights in the hall and the intimate audience positioning.

After a hearty breakfast, and a morning yoga session (very necessary with all the driving and concerts!) we crawled back to Perth...at 50mph (remember that wheel!) to get the car sorted. This all took a pretty long time...

What a sorry sight!


After a pub lunch, we got back on the road and drove to Biggar where we were given quite possibly the best preconcert dinner we've ever had...

(All homemade with handwritten mounted labels and flowers!)
Beef and tapenade stew with creamy mash and salad
Raspberry, Apple, crumble with cream and yogurt.
We're huge foodies so of course the photos are very necessary!

The piano at the hall despite being over 100 years old, sounds beautiful. Very deep and mellow. We then had to get straight back on the road to drive to West Kilbride as we had two school concerts starting at 9am the following morning.

Kirkcaldy - I've only just learnt how to pronounce it

We spent quite a while fiddling with the lights in the Kirk at Kirkcaldy...there were over 20 different lighting presets and the best ones meant we couldn't see our music...however, I found some stand lights and little lamps, so we could maintain the carefully selected atmospheric glow!

The acoustic was great and the piano sounded quite shiny, which suited the flute well. I think Scottish audiences are way more appreciative than audiences further south. Again, we did two encores and they didn't stop clapping and stamping at the end of the concert.

We stayed with the chairperson Mairi and her husband Larry at Blinkbonny Cottage (!!) which is so wonderful, and has such comfortable carpet - I could literally sleep on it!They made us a fantastic dinner after the concert and we sat around the fire talking and drinking whisky until the early hours.

The concert in Perth was a great success, the audience very enthusiastic and we came on to do two encores. We then stayed with committee members John and Rosie, where we experienced many a whisky.

This morning we went to Perth High School to give a workshop, arranged by Perth Chamber Music Society and Enterprise Scotland. The pupils were between 14-17 and were a mixture of very enthusiastic and your typical embarrassed teenager type, but it went down well, and one girl left so enthused exclaiming to the head of music that she's now definitely switching to learn the flute (she's currently a percussionist). We also got asked why we weren't married...

Just as we were about to set off for our next destination (Kirkcaldy) Leo noticed that one of the front wheels was dented and swollen - this was obviously the result of the humungous unavoidable potholes we experienced on our way up to the Scottish Boarders on the first day.
We've just spent the last two hours sitting in several mechanics finding a way around the problem...apparently driving on this wheel is a definite no-go. We're now using the spare wheel where we can go at a max speed of 50mph, have ordered a new wheel to come in tomorrow morning. So we're that dreadful car on the motorway crawling along to Kirkcaldy, and will have to get up early tomorrow and drive back to Perth to get the replacement before going on Biggar (goodbye day trip to Loch Lomond 😞)

After a huge breakfast, watching the snow storm outside, thinking we'd be stuck indoors all morning and then have an arduous drive up to Perth it cleared totally within 30minutes. So we went on a beautiful walk up to Black Andrew and hung out with the animals at the bnb (horses, ducks, pheasants, dogs and a cat).
We're now on our way up to Perth, where closures on the same road as yesterday (the A7) have scuppered us again! I would advise everyone to avoid the A7, always!

Discoveries made today:
The forth bridge is not the fourth bridge (which I was expecting)
Leo gets grumpy if he doesn't have a second cup of coffee by 3pm
I can't eat a pear without getting it all over my nose
Yes u can experience 4 seasons in a day in Scotland! Our day has been sandwiched by snow blizzards...

Horses!

Amazing view :)

We're on our way!

On the drive up yesterday we experienced horrendous rain, hail, brilliant blue skies and snow! 

I was exceptionally proud of myself -having not driven a manual in a number of years, I managed to drive us 3 hours of the way there problem free! We were doing so well for time, aiming to arrive at our bnb for 8pm. When we were just 30 minutes away the only road to take us where we need to go to was closed...with no diversions!  A 2.5 hour detour later, after following rabbits and sheep along the road with a sheer cliff edge on the left, we finally made it to Selkirk, where we'd decided to break the journey. 

If you need a bnb on the Scottish Boarders, I'd thoroughly recommend where we stayed! (Broadmeadows Farmhouse) - they'd made us dinner for when we'd finally arrived and they only rent out the two (massive) rooms...so you have free reign of the entire place. They also have a piano, and got pretty excited when Leo played it. 

Broadmeadows Farmhouse