Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Okay, so I'm a little late. It's still Friday! Days 3 and 4 of my John O'Groats trail hike. For the start of the trip, see last Friday's post .  Day 3: Ulbster to Wick Strictly speaking, this should have been Whaligo to Wick, a nearly 12 mile hike by the time we would add on the distance to our hotel. We opted to cut it a little short in the interests of time and preserving my hiking partner's increasingly painful knee. Our taxi driver in fact took us to a start point that was only about a mile up the coast from Whaligo, so we still had a nearly 10 1/2 mile hike! We began at an old farmstead labeled on the map as the Mains of Ulbster. Though the house appeared abandoned, the farm is being worked, and we followed the farmer in his little golf-cart farm vehicle down the road to our start. The farm buildings appear largely abandoned, and the small graveyard (with mausoleum, front left) was not particularly well maintained. The graves I could see dated to around 120 yea

Oh, yeah. I was going to do the whole 5 days in one post. Now that I've stopped laughing at my silly delusions, I'll share photos from the first 2 days, which is as much as I can even get through at a skim, just picking and editing the photos I want to use. Editing photos from nearly 2 months of hiking is a huge task! In fact, I couldn't even get this small post done in time. What is the JOGT? It's more of a route than a trail in some places, and runs along the coast of Scotland from Inverness to John O'Groats at the far NE tip of the mainland. It normally takes about 14 days , in stages running from about 8 to 15 miles. Don't let the lack of elevation gain fool you, either: with a rough and often overgrown track, those are long, hard days. We didn't have two weeks, and the southern parts of the trail didn't seem as interesting, so we started 2/3 of the way up, with what is officially the 10th stage.    Day 1: Dunbeath Harbour to Lybster One thing to kno

Title: Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry Author: Rosalie K. Fry Publication Info: Kindle edition, NYR Children's Collection. Original hardback, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1957, 87 pages, as Child of the Western Isles. Source: Library digital editions Publisher's Blurb: Fiona McConville is a child of the Western Isles, living on the Scottish mainland. City life doesn’t suit Fiona and at age ten she is sent back to her beloved isles to live with her grandparents. There she learns more about her mother’s strange ways with the seals and seabirds; hears stories of the selkies, mythological creatures that are half seal and half human; and wonders about her baby brother, Jamie, who disappeared long ago but whom fishermen claim to have seen. Fiona is determined to find Jamie and enlists her cousin Rory to help. When her grandparents are suddenly threatened with eviction, Fiona and Rory go into action. Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry is a magical story of the power of place and family hi

We have another great cozy from Great Escapes blog tours! Title: The Case of the Clobbered Cad Author: Debra E. Marvin Publisher: Journey Fiction, 2017. 302 pages (paperback) Source: Great Escapes free book tours ISBN-13: 978-1946892027 E-Book ASIN: B0749K9NZX   Publisher's Summary: Inspired by the famous Girl Detective, the members of the Olentangy Heights Girls’ Detective Society, affectionately known as the Nosy Parkers, spent their formative years studying criminology, codes, and capers. Unfortunately, opportunities to put their unique skills to work were thin on the ground in the post-war boom of their little corner of suburbia and they eventually grew up to pursue more sensible careers. Until… Heather Munro’s youthful devotion to The Girl Detective led to a passion for digging around in history. Now pursuing her Master’s Degree in Celtic Studies, Heather must balance exploring Edinburgh with her determination to excel in her all–male classes at the University. Unfo

Title: At the Water's Edge Author: Sara Gruen Publisher: Spiegel & Grau, 348 pages Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Summary:  After embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off financially by Ellis’s father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son’s inability to serve in WWII due to his being colorblind. To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland in the midst of war. Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster, while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie,