Community group spreads festive joy on north coast with Christmas dinner deliveries, a winter grotto and lots of goody bags

North Coast Connection, which runs community wellbeing hub the Kyle Centre in Tongue, has been bringing festive cheer to young and old in the run-up to Christmas.

Volunteers delivered 28 Christmas dinners and more than 80 festive treat bags to residents in the Tongue, Melness and Skerray area on December 9.

And link worker Megan Macdonald created a winter grotto, complete with fairly lights, festive fireplace and Christmas tree in the centre's newly built log cabin.

Around 17 children living in the area visited the grotto on December 15 to be given healthy snacks and snowballs made by volunteer Annette Macdonald along with Santa letter packs and other Christmas goodies.

The youngest visitor of the day was one-month-old Sula Law with parents Nick Law and Cora Harrison.

Nick said: "The grotto was really lovely and we were delighted to receive pom-poms, baubles and other Christmas goodies.

"We decided to go along to the craft group the following day. We have had a lovely time and made some new friends along the way too."

Centre manager Sarah Beveridge said: "It was disappointing that we couldn’t hold our party as we would have liked. However our staff and volunteers have worked incredibly hard to spread Christmas cheer throughout the community, and it has been an absolute joy to do be able to do this.

"We were delighted that everything was so well received and we’ve had such lovely feedback from so many people."

More information on centre's activities can be found on its Facebook page.

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