Setting the scene

Intro:

'Projects' is a peculiar thing which has happened in the school I work for at this time every year for about three decades - there's even a book about it. The idea is that while the older kids have exams, the third year (aged 14-15) are taken away in small groups to experience the outside world.

In my case this year (and last) 'Projects' meant two weeks of hillwalking in the north west of Scotland, one week on Knoydart and one on the Island of Rum. My colleage and friend Max runs this project and another group mirror us, spending their first week on Rum and crossing over to Knoydart in the second week.

This year staffing the project together with Max and myself were Regis, Fiona and Anne. Fiona covered the Knoydart leg of the Project while Anne arrived to join us on Rum, the rest of us were there for the whole twelve days. I figure using the staff's first names is OK but obviously wont be making any specific mention of the kids individually, suffice it to say there were fourteen of them and a roughly even mix of boys and girls.

One other note is that I lifted my self imposed abstinence from alcohol for the duration since the reasons for it seemed unlikely to follow me there. Also I found last year that working 24/7 for two weeks is tough going, and a glass of wine at the end of the day really helps keep it from becoming a slog.

All of the entries from here up to Friday 28th were made from a combination of memory and notes, and were entered as back-dated blog posts on Saturday 29th - from Monday 17th I was effectively incommunicado with no access to the internet and barely any other form of commuication with the outside world.