Our final stop was a lovely cabin in the woods in North Georgia. It was very peaceful but lacked wifi so no blog posts. I’ve been keeping a diary however, so I’m taking advantage of the wifi at Atlanta Airport to catch up.

Wednesday 27 July, 4pm

Today, we left North Carolina and returned to Georgia. It was a very pretty run through to Blairsville, which is the nearest town to the cabin we are staying in. We didn’t explore the place much but still had a very good impression of it. We started at the Welcome Centre at the Chamber of Commerce, to get trail information etc, and came across possibly the most helpful person we’ve ever found in one of those places. Then we moved on to the nearest shopping centre where we ate a good lunch in The Aviator Cafe (excellent service again) before grocery shopping in the supermarket next door. This was Bi-Lo, a chain new to us, and it was really brilliant – full of good, fresh fruit and vegetables and even stuff like tofu and other vegetarian staples which we’ve struggled to find in US supermarkets in the past. Even their checkout system seemed super-efficient compared to home. Maybe I have been on holiday too long if I am finding a supermarket so exciting but Tesco in Maryhill will now seem a terrible climbdown (though I don’t like it much anyhow, even if it is new).

Our cabin is a few miles further on, half way up Blood Mountain (not as remote as it sounds, it is just off US 19). We had swithered about choosing more modern cabins closer to town or these ones which are more basic but have the advantage of almost straddling the Appalachian Trail. The trail won. The cabin (Wild Boar) is great, we have all we need and are now sitting on the balcony enjoying coffee. There are two wild boar heads on the cabin wall, Henry and Clyde apparently (the latter a good name for visiting Glaswegians). According to the cabin log book, other guests have found them spooky but they seem ok to me, and they also seem to have died accidental deaths (trucks on the road). I wouldn’t like to think they’d been hunted.

There are two bedrooms – a small one downstairs and a loft under the eaves. We’ll sleep in the latter and use the other as a walk-in dressing room. Such luxury! Our last room in Bryson City was called the tree house, but this almost literally is one. The balcony has been built round a living tree while the trunk supporting the roof has not been modified and still has its branches intact.

10pm. Pizza cooked and eaten. Beer drunk. Most people who have written in the cabin log drive out somewhere for dinner but, as I’ve said before, we’d rather both be able to have beer or wine so we’ll be eating in every evening. Even if the booze does send me to sleep. And so to bed.