THE CHARGE AT CULLODEN

December brings us to the Dinosaur Christmas walk and lunch.

Well, actually we didn't do the walk bit this year, just the lunch bit.

I also did not take any photos of the outside of our lunch venue, Culloden House Hotel. So, here is a photo of the outside of the hotel taken in April 2016, which also shows Sharon with Robbie and Liam who had actually walked along the Gruffalo walk to get to the Hotel.

Culloden House is a Georgian Mansion, built over 200 years ago being completed in 1778. The architects were the celebrated Adam brothers from Edinburgh, who had been engaged at the same time on a little side contract to build Fort George! You can see the similarities in some of the stonework, if that sort of thing tickles your fancy.

Suffice to say, the House has some very fine decorative touches as you might expect from the Adam's family.

You might also expect that such a fine place would serve a nice pre-dinner drink. It did. What was unexpected was that you would need to take out a mortgage to pay for it!

Here is our guest eater, Fiona and her mother Susan guffawing in disbelief when Robin told them how much their drinks had cost!

"You're havin' a laugh", they cried.

Robin (and the rest of us) just cried.

We didn't hang around for a bit of a session then and soon repaired to the Dining Room, which was nicely appointed - not that this softened the blow of the cost of gin.

We took our seats and by some magic involving Sue and the waiters, we all got the right meal, even though a number of us could no longer remember what we had chosen.

After ordering, Richie decided to go and look for the other twelve bottles of red that he thought he must have paid for.

Here we all are waiting for someone to start dancing on the little table in the middle. Nobody ever did.

After our Christmas dinner, we all retired to the lounge for coffee, mince pies and no after dinner liqueurs. We also did Mac and Janet's favourite, Secret Santa.

Here are Mac and Janet, happy and relieved that they will never have to do Secret Santa again, as they have decided to retire from the Dinosaurs.

We shall remember them as happy jovial souls, just like in this picture.

As it is a Dinosaur do, we had to have a group photo and here we are gathered round the tree, all happy and smiling.

We all had a good time and thanks to Sue and Charlie for sorting it all out. Things will not be the same without Mac and Janet and they will always be welcome to join in any of our walks in the future for a small fee.

Before I leave the blogging for this year, it is with some sadness that I have to record the very sad death of one of our guest walkers from some time ago.

The lovely Maria Ross walked with us on the Dava Way in February 2010 as training for a charity walk she was undertaking. This type of activity was typical of Maria, who always thought of others. Those of us who knew her, will remember that and we will miss her.