Monthly Archives: October 2011

Getting a good pounding in the North Sea

Getting excited emails from my surfing friend Mr Fryer about a decent swell coming in on saturday morning, it was time to try my hand at surfing again.  We arrived at Aberdeen beach at 7am just as the sun was rising and the swell was looking good, a little too good.  Both Scott and I rather inexperienced novices at this sport we both looked at each other rather worryingly at the size of the waves!  We thought we would get the hero photos first before we went in as we were certain it was not going to be a pretty site after!

Once in I remembered how hard it is on your shoulders to battle through the white water to paddle ‘out back’ to were it is relatively calm before the waves break, we then sit on the boards bobbying around admiring the sunrising and choosing the wave we would try and ride in and get a pretty sure thing pounding by mother nature as we fall off.  Well we did get a good pounding trying to surf in, both getting up a few times and really enjoying it.  Mr Fryer caught a few beauty rides and it made us want to get better so we could surf like him as it just looked magical riding the waves like he did. 

The rest of the day was spent playign with the baby, she has started to love playing with building blocks

When i say playing there is nothing intellectual going on here, she is not making towers or spelling out words.  She mainly just throws them around and waits for us to pick them up and place them back in front of her before she throws them around again.  When she gets bored of this she does laps around the coffee table with her new found crawling skills.

Once she had tired us out we put her to bed and all chipped in and made dinner together and had a good dinner talking about everything and everyone. 

Was a great evening and thank you Caryn and Frank for all your help and baby sitting this weekend.

Isle of Lewis

On Thursday 29th September, Ellis and Lara piled into the car to meet Granny Caryn and Grumpsy at Inverness Airport. The plan was to spend until Sunday travelling together through Lewis and Harris, Lara and Ellis would then return to Aberdeen while Caryn and Frank continued through the Islands and through Scotland also to Aberdeen the following Friday.

We arrived at Inverness Airport to meet mum and dad and all had lunch in the airport. It is a teeny airport with lovely views! I had decided that it would be easiest to jump into mum and dad’s hire car rather than drive two over to the hebrides so we shoehorned buggy, bags and people into a peugot thing and set off for the West.

We spent a lovely evening in Ullapool where we had dinner in the Arch and stayed in a hotel called the Riverside. Ellis managed to pee on the floor in the room but I managed to soak it up so you couldn’t tell…

We caught the morning ferry to Stornoway. Mum was prepared and had travel sickness prevention pills so we popped one of those each before setting off. The crossing was pretty tame (mum and dad had been told it was rough) so we were lucky.

It was a typical grey Scottish sky which made photos a little uninteresting so we did the best we could with my limited photography skills! The best photos are the people shots!

Friday we thought we would head over to the Iron Age House on the western coast of Lewis. It is on a beach and supposed to be interesting viewing, according to the tourist websites. It was a shame therefore that they didn’t mention that it was closed after the 9th September, especially since it is about an hour’s drive from the capital. Nevermind we thought, at least we got to see some views and sheep. We headed back to Stornoway to go to the museum and catch a glimpse of the famouse viking chessmen. Unfortunately this was also shut so we trotted to the art gallery which we knew to be open as we had seen people coming and going. We were out of luck again though as that was the day that they changed the exhibitions over… All in all a rather unsuccessful day of tourism.

We stayed in the Jannel B&B which was fabulous. The owner was very accommodating and chatty and the rooms were very clean and well done. It was a very comfortable place to spend a couple of nights.

I had done a small amount of research and discovered the eatery of choice was called Digby Chick. We headed over there on the Friday night but of course it was fully booked. We took the recommendation offered by one of the staff there and headed to a restaurant called the Boatshed. We had a lovely dinner where mum and dad had the most enormous and delicious lingoustines and I had a lovely rack of Lewis lamb. We should had taken a photo of they food becasue it looked incredible!

Saturday we headed to look at a Blackhouse, where the Islanders used to live and then off to the Callandish Standing Stomes for a lovely sunset and some Henge style masonry.

We went back to the Boatshed for dinner on Saturday where Ellis tried to shove chewed bread into Grumpsy’s mouth.

Unfortunately Granny was Tom Dick on Sunday. Dad and I visited the first beach (pics in gallery) and Ellis came with us for the 2nd. I reckon it was all the kisses Ellis bestowed on Granny before dinner on Saturday that caused her being ill…

All the pics can be seen by clicking here

Pictures in a wet, dark and muddy cave of climbers

When you talk about climbing, you imagine beautiful mountains, sunshine and amazing views.  Well not this time.  the Venue was a wet, dark and muddy cave near Dunkeld called ‘The Tube’ due to its shape.  One of the only venues of its kind for drytooling in the UK (drytooling is using the same equipment for ice climbing but on rocks.

Above is ‘The Tube’ an old disused slate quarry.  I went not with the intention of climbing, but of taking pictures, the route they were trying was way above my physical capabilities ( fast and furious M10+ for those intersted).  I was tired from biking the previous 5 days in a row and went to have a go at photographing them all doing it.  I took a rope with me and managed to get one of them to attach it to the middle of the roof and then I climbed up it and sat there taking pictures form the top of the cave for a different angle.  It is the first time I have tried doing this and really enjoyed it.  Was a bit of a tangle of ropes, and trying to attach my camera to me making sure I wouldn’t drop it to an expensive mess of springs and broken glass, but i got up there and was happy hanging in space with my finger over the shutter button ready for the hero shots!

It was very impressive to watch them all scratch their way up this 55 degree over hanging wall contorting themselves into funny body positions to try and rest and take the weight of their arms.  Sometimes ratehr hard to watch as you knew they were about to pop off the holds and fall into thin air until their ropes tightened and they stopped safely dangling in the middle fo no were.

Good effort to those who climbed it, bet you are feelign sore today!  rest of the pics are here

Up Macdui on a bike

Rich, Martin, Neil, Ryan and I went for a jaunt up to Ben Macdui (second highest lump in the UK) with our bikes on Friday

We set off from Linn of Dee and the weather was great for this time of year, we were all in shorts and t-shirts.  By looking at the maps we knew it was not all going to be rideable and soon turning up right to the Sron Liach ridge the hike a bike began, and it went on, and on, and on

after about and hour and a half of shoudlering our bikes, eating jelly sweats and swearing at each other we finally made it to the top.  Thankfully we had great views all around us and did the now custom ‘Gun Show’ at the top

Now for the fun bit, this was going to be a great descent, a long descent and a testing descent for both us and our bikes

just before we got off the Plateau Martin managed to slice his tyre wall. A great start.  But once fixed we got into the descent proper.  It was all it was rumoured to be, a bit rocky technical mental track down.  Rich was the next victim to fall to the trail, loosing his rear mech to a large pointy rock.  Not to worry we will all help!

it took of rock bashing, sawing and brute strength to fix it but we got his bike back up and running again.  Off we went again, for martin to puncture again.  This became a bit of the theme for the descent!

i think by the time we had finished we totalled 9 punctures, two ripped off rear mechs (both Rich’s who had to resort to single speeding) a slashed tyre wall and a broken rim.  A great hard days riding in the Cairngorms riding.

the beer tasted so good after we arrived home!  All the pictures can be seen by clicking here

Swimming , running & Biking

Yup you guessed it, I was convinced by Frank that another triathlon was a good idea.  this one had a slight twist, no sanitised swimming pool swim, but the swim was from the main land to an island in the North Sea……

this is frank in front of the swim we had to do to the island on the other side, we had to take our bikes and running gear over on the little boats and then come back again to then swim.

this was taken from the boat ont eh way over, was a great day and a relief as it was raining heavy the day before!  I must admit i didn’t do a great deal of swim training for this race, just a bit in the lake in Gap so was rather scared of it as i had never swam in the sea across a channel before.  I had i mentioned this was a ferry lane as well…. 

Well the starter horn went off and we all jumped in the sea, a chorus of high pitch squeals as the shock of the water and then a froth of furious swimming across to the other side.  once there grabbing our mountain bikes and riding around the island, and if that wasn’t enough we then had to do a hill run up to the high point on the island and then back down again, some of it included scrambling up rather steep slopes grabbing at heather as it was that steep and the running style was binned and the crawling style adopted.

this was all filmed for the TV program ‘The adventure show’ and will be shown on BBC2 in scotland on the 18th of October.  if you let young children watch it

Be warned – they interviewed Frank and he has a potty mouth!!!!!

It was a great race, amazing scenery and well organised, it was called the ‘Craggy Island Tri’ and I would recommend it to anyone.

Daddy and Daughter Bike ride

The day was not the best weather but we decided to have a go at family bike riding.  Euan & Lainie, Chris & Rowie and I decided to ride with our infants to from Aboyne to Ballater.  I had just bought Ellis a trailer and was keen to try it out, we chose a smooth trail called the ‘Deeside Way’ along an old railway line.

Ellis above in her trailer all wrapped up warm.  She loved it, half the time making noises at passing objects the rest snoozing.  We got to Ballater and went to a cafe to have lunch (and lots of cake) and then rode back again.  It was a great ride and great to finally be out on a bike with my daughter!  May it long continue like this!

Rest of the pics are here

back to Gap (at last)

Firstly not sure why this has taken me so long to update, nearly 6 weeks late – errr I was busy….  well that is my excuse and I am sticking to it.  Due to this holiay being so long ago, I am going o find it hard to remember what we did (that is why I write this blog as a reminder to myself ).  So it it will mainly be snippets.

Due to Lara’s hand being broken our idea of doing lots of biking went out the window, so we spent quite a bit of time walking in the mountains, Ellis being the cool Little lady she is sat on my back happily waving at cows as I keep my nervous eye on them ( they are all evil and out to kill me). 

We also spent a lot of time by the Lac de Serre Poncon which was lovely.  We bought her a little tent and Granny Smith was great at entertaining her singing ‘twinkle twinkle little star’  I can honestly say that song didn’t start to grate after the thousands time…… it kept Ellis amused anyway!  Lara and I would go swimming and Lara managed to soak up the sun which she desperately misses in Aberdeen.

Ellis thought the water was too cold and didn’t like going to play in it……  she is definitely her mothers daughter as everytime Lara went into it is was one of those inch by inch slowly wading in type of water entries that if I tried to speed up I got a short sharp shouting at and I knew she meant it “ ONE MORE SPLASH AND I WILL ####### KILL YOU!!!”

Not being great at sunbathing I decided to take up windsurfing, dad handily has a new one hanging in the garage so i decided to havea  go.  Great fun!  a little wobbly to start off with but the more I did it the more my confidence grew and the faster I went.  I look forward to more summer time spent on it.

The lake in question – the biggest man made fresh water lake in Europe and bloody lovely it is too!

Some days it was a little too hot to take Ellis out into the sun, so Granny Smith would stick her in the bath and feed her on the Patio.  She would sit and happily splash around for ages, and then when she was finished you could easily clean all the food she had liberally distributed all over her self, a great two in one system!

On these hot days I would take the opportunity to go and get out on my bike, i managed to get out on my bike and tick off a couple of classic Tour De France climbs.  The fear Mount Ventoux  (having done it now i understand the hype, it is hard!)  and the Col D’Izoard.
Ellis went to the swimming pool once, she loved it and it was great for her to play in but unfortuntaly her skin did not like the chlorine and until her skin gets a little less sensitive she will have to give it a miss.
Other than that we spent a lot of time with our local friends we made out there when we were in Gap on out Honeymoon, was great to spend time with them and go out biking / walking with them.  Granny and Pops were great at babysitting, Granny spent most of the time getting beaten up
and we had to resort to caging the beast!
the rest of the pictures from the holiday can be seen by clicking here