Monthly Archives: February 2012

Trailer riding

We awoke to  massive hangovers after Ellis’s wild birthday party the day before 🙂  We woke up and looked out the window – sunny!  Bonus.  We had arranged to go for a bike ride with the Cartlidges along the Deeside way with the bambinos in the trailers.  Stupidly I played a game of  ‘paper , scissors, stone’ with Lara to see who would pull squeaker.  I never win that stupid game!

We rode from Peterculter to Crathes castle near Banchory.  The Deeside Way is an old converted railway line so a pretty smooth surface which soon had both Ellis and Sophie giving it the big ZZZZZZZZZZZs.

Part of my xmas present from Lara is a new rucksack that means I can carry my good camera with ease – so thought I had better get get on with it and try and get some nice pics of the families.  As always Ellis is a nosy little blighter and is always trying to fiddle with what you are playing with, so my setting where being destroyed by little fingers fiddling!

It was pretty cold and we did not hang around for long but the models where all obliging and there was not to much moaning

The girls loved playing in the leaves whilst Lainie threw leaves at them to try and make them smile.  Came out with mixed results with shadows all over the place.  I fancy going out again when it is a little warmer for the kids and have a proper go at family portraits.

A lovely ride with the girls singing as they went over bumps on the way home.  The last stretch was a long draggy up hill.  It makes for considerable work pulling the trailer up there. Lara pulled along side me on the way up and it was clear she wanted a race and fancied her chances.  We both slowly trying to be subtle sped up bit by bit to try and drop the other.  Near the top the cow just stood up and smiled at me and dropped me.  I had pulled her darling daughter for the last 25km and she goes and does that!!!!!  I am going to brush up on my paper scissors stones strategy so next time she can pull her!!!  Revenge will be sweet.

Squeaker is 1!

Well somewhere in between poo filled nappies, screaming nights, stair climbing, walking, waving to every stranger and eating her body weight in dried apricots – Ellis has made it to her first birthday!

We held a small party for her on Sunday where a few came around to share with Ellis her cake.  She was a little spoilt with all the presents she was given (thank you everyone for being so generous!)

She was pretty quick on the update on how to get into them and got excited as each new present was placed in front of her.

We have now found out she loves balloons and is not scared of them popping (braver than her Auntie Rachel…. ) Soon it was cake time.  She wasn’t really sure what to make of it.

But once the candle was blown out she worked out if was food and just attacked it with her grubby little mitts!  Once mum had cut it up she had her first proper taste of cake

Of course good old mum and Granny C had made her a lactose free cake and she could eat as much as she liked!

The rest of the day was spent playing with her new toys which she loved and by the end of it she was exhausted and went to bed early to sleep off the days excitement.  Thank you everyone.

For the rest of the pics click here

Abort, abort! The weather is minging!

Andy, Scott and I decided to go and have a wee looksie on the off  chance that it might be ok to go climbing in Lochnagar.  The weather forecast was not the most encouraging but as ever they are not always correct and I am one for ‘giving it a go’ just in case Mr weather has not got his ducks in a row.

We set off on bikes again from the car park, it was already snowing pretty heavily on the way up making it a little harder than normal on the bikes having to ride through snow.  All the time thinking…. skis – where the hell are my skis! We dumped the bikes a bit lower than normal due to the path being proper ice rink like with sheet ice all over it.  As we got higher up the weather got worse and worse,  it wasn’t particularly cold in the snow but rather wet and we were slowly getting wetter and wetter

Andy above.  As we got closer to the Meikle Pap col, the weather was getting wilder and we all kind of gave each other that look, the ” seriously this sucks” look.  After much discussion which went something like this ” this is shit, lets go to the pub – ok, ok” we turned back and decided it was not to be that day.  The idea of climbing in this weather appealed to none of us!

The look of three blokes who decided to go to the pub!  On the way back down Scott was reliving a story of when he scissored kicked walking down there and landed on his arse.  Just as he said it he re-enacted it just for us, was so funny, through laughter Andy ended up doing the same.  I was nearly crying with tears whilst the two of them scrabbled around on the floor trying to stand back up

We got back to the bikes and by now a fair bit of snow had fallen making the ride back down slippy slidy fun!  When we reached the bottom riding in the Glen it was proper horrible.  The wind and snow was coming straight down off the hill and smacking you full force making it hard to ride the bikes.

Once back at the can we all agreed it was a good decision and all that was to decide now was which pub to go to……

Skiing… Almost!

Sunday was ski day for me (Lara) and so I headed off with Scotty, Andy and Mon down to …. To see what we could find!

We were excited on the drive south west as we saw snooooow covering the hills! However, the snow didn’t seem to have landed quite so thickly where were egan from. We did have rather an i teresting attempt to get to the car park which resulted in reversing/sliding down the sheet ice covered tarmac to a passing place where we abandoned the van for the day. Scotty did a jolly good job of not putting us down the bottom of the hill bonnet over tailpipe.

We walked up with skis on back for a while, until we decided the snow there was was no longer going to ball up on the skins :). We managed to get in a couple of basic kickturns before Scotty set of an avalanche. Well, a slide really with about a 4″ headwall so it was never going to do any damage but was entertaining nonethless!!

We got to a point where Mon and I decided notto bother hiking up any further. The boys once again donned skis on back to get to the top and therefore a few extra turns. I didn’t go up as i thought they would just be pushing an inch or two of fresh snow off a layer of ice but I was wrong and in hindsight perhaps should have gone up. Anyway. mon and i enjoyed some hot chocolate and we all the skiied down the couple of turns in a whiteout before we hit the grass.

I was rather worried about skiing on the grass but once i got into it and realised that i didn’t need to slow down (because it was almost impossible) i relaxed into it and it was actually the most fun skiing of the day. The large tufts of grass sometimes had gaps the other side of them which made it good fun to hop off.

Of course, once we were half way or back to the car, the whiteout lifted and the sun came out revealing a very appealing looking area where we had just been. We all agreed it would be an excellent choice once some more snow has fallen!

Pics to follow

Hunting Northern Lights

I got an email from Chris showing pictures of some amazing northern lights taken only a few miles form home. I was pissed!!!! I have signed up to about 4 websites that are suppose to email you when there should be some activity in the atmosphere, and I had received nothing! It has always been one of my life ambitions to see the aurora borealis, and to be able to see it so close to home was too good to miss. I spent the next hour or so going to all the forecast sites I know and it was forecasted for more activity that evening and the sky was suppose to be clear.

I arranged with Chris Fryer to go to Clachnaben that night,  a local hill that I thought should be clear enough of Aberdeen’s light pollution.  We set off around 10pm with our cameras and loads of warm clothing. We got to the top after about and hour and to amuse ourselves we took pictures of star trails etc. We both excitedly scanned the sky pretty frequently. After about two hours of being up there I looked up and the cloud was doing strange things. I looked again and it was not cloud!!!!!! It was the northern lights!!!!!!! Not the bright greens you normally see, but more greyish green.

I was mid way taking a star trail, so the camera was quickly snatched from that and I tried to take a picture of it – not the most succesful attempt but you can get an idea.  The lights danced and flickered above our selves as chris andIi watched, was very cool indeed.  It wasn’t a massive show but it was still amazing to see and wetted the appetite for more!

After it disappeared back to star trails.  The pic above chris was very decent and decided to walk down the path with his head torch on…….  again you can see some green in it ( aurora borealis), this was not visible to the human eye, the shutter speed here is about 7 minutes. 

We then sat down for a bit in sleeping bags for warmth and watched the sky hoping for more, it started to cloud over and at 2:30am we called it a night and wondered down back to the cars – home – and bed by 4.  Was a long day at work the next day!

Easy Gully Creag Megaidgh

Lara and Ellis had gone down to London to go shopping for brides maids dresses for Tallie’s and Chester’s wedding – I was not invited ( thank god!!!, that is to the shopping not the wedding).  I decided the night before that the weather looked good on the Friday for a ski.  As it being a Friday I could find no one to play with so thought to hell with it I will be a billy no mates and went alone.

I drove over to the Creag Megaidgh car park after work and arrived around 10ish.  I had decided to live the life of luxury and had bought a 4 pack of stella on the way and thought it was time to treat myself!  I sat up in the van under the stars drinking my beer and reading my Grandpa’s book (which if you read this grandpa I think it is brilliant!) with my headtorch. 

I woke in the morning to find that it had snowed over night…. excitement levels rising!  Above is the view form my bedroom door.  I struggled out of my nice warm sleeping bag that was lovely and comfy and into my ski clothes.  I had never been into this corrie before and was looking forward to going somewhere new.

I set off around 9 ish and the walk took me about an hour till I turned into Coire Ardair and was greeted with a cracking view and the excitement level rose even higher.  I wanted to try and ski Easy Gully (I) which is the obvious gully on the picture leading left up onto the snowy col top left.  There was a lot of fresh snow in it so was a little careful at the bottom and dug a pit to see what the snow was like.  No real obvious layers apart from the fresh snow of last night which would do no harm – so I decided to go for it!

I have decided I will never be a TV presenter!  Never done that before with my camera, as always, I hate the sound of my own voice so might not do that again.  The climb up was pretty hard going through all the fresh snow, I just kept of thinking of the descent and it would all be worth it.  When I got to the top of the gully the norm happened…..

Yup the weather came in and I couldn’t see a thing!  oh well.  I waited about for a bit and the weather started to lift enough for the descent.  I didn’t want to hang around too long before I talked myself out of it.

The ski down was superb!  Once I had gotten over the scary wind lip that half collapsed as i went over it and into the gully proper – there was 6″ of scotland’s finest powder all the way down to Lochan A’Choire at the bottom.

half way down – very hard to take pics on your own of yourself.   In the pic below you can just make out my tracks.

The sun was out on the way out and I had been clever and bought my headphones and was walking out listening to some good old rock and roll playing the solos on my ski poles as and when it was required.  The one other person I saw that day passed me at a rather lively performance to a guitar solo on my ski pole- he looked at me like I should have been locked up!

A great day – I found it a little harder than when I ski these sorts of things with other people.  Being by yourself and doing this sort of thing made it that little bit more concentrating and aware of the risks than with friends.  Anyway, snow is again falling so hoping to be able and get out skiing again this weekend!  LET IT SNOW!!!!