Skye and Cuillens from the Bealach na Ba

Skye and Cuillens from the Bealach na Ba
Originally uploaded by Lee Carson

Well we can mark camping off as a success! After my mini-rant about the Scottish tourist industry it was great to find some places getting it really right, for a price.
We travelled west on Sunday, stopping in Strathpeffer at the old railway station for soup and sandwiches before the main push into Applecross. Applecross is where we got engaged, where we came on honeymoon and the last time we were there was Kit's 1st birthday (though the ungrateful brat pretended he couldn't remember it!) so it has a lot to answer for.  It is well known for a couple of things, 1) the road to get there and 2) the food waiting for you if you make it.
Well the road didn't let us down... Wipers on fastest setting, fog lights front and rear and off we went round bends called such delights as "Devil's Elbow". There was no point stopping at the viewpoint as we could se the clouds perfectly well from our vantage point deep inside them but once we began the downward stretch things brightened up a little. The little Suzuki Vitara parked on its side in a gully towards the end of the pass was a gentle reminder that not everyone takes it so easy on this road...I cautiously stopped and checked there were no bodies still inside, and it was clear from the detritus inside that a family with young children had had a journey they would not forget in a hurry.
Our camping hut was as basic as I'd hoped, clean and bright, small enough to be exciting but large enough to stand up in. The front door could have been a couple of inches taller mind you, as both Lorna's and my head will attest to. Ouch.
Sunday evening was spent in the award winning Applecross Inn where we ate and drank because that's what we do. At £8.95 the customary half pint of prawns has gone from snack to main meal status (another ouch) but we enjoyed fresh prawn cocktail, cod and haddock washed down with some pints of Red Cuillen ale.
Oh, the football was on and those hacking Dutch were soundly beaten in the last 3 minutes of extra time. Shame on them.
Monday was wet and we passed the morning visiting the local heritage centre, Free Church and then lunched in the Potting Shed set in the walled garden of the local hunting stately home. Another place Getting It Right, I was pleased to see - pricey but not too bad considering that by the time you got there you were the most captive market in the world.
Back to the hut for a snooze then off for dinner again...this time crab salad, lemon monk fish or cheesy pasta depending on which family member you were. A bit more beer then back to the camp site to read until dark.
Kit loved the whole camping thing - the sleeping bag, showering in the morning, the hut...everything. Considering how wet he got on out walk I was pleased he is a fairly resilient boy all in all.
We headed back to mum's in Tain today and finally got some good weather worth stopping for as the picture shows. Applecross sits on the mainland opposite Skye and it's really never the same view twice.
More pics to come, of course, but the more pressing matter on my mind is...tomorrow we load up the motorbike and head for Orkney. Kit is well looked after at Granny's but the rain is coming down again and Lorna keeps waving huge items of clothing / electrical equipment / footwear under my nose and asking if there will be room...

Tourists.

Tourists.
Originally uploaded by Lee Carson

We were hosts to two visitors yesterday, Doris and Katie who had come all the way from California to Edinburgh as part of a wider European trip. Doris is Lorna's gran's cousin, and Katie is Doris's granddaughter. So that's that.

Katie had heard of Rosslyn Chapel in that book by what's his name, and although she hadn't read it it yet she'd seen the film and knew she wanted to visit the place itself. So we picked them up and after a lunch at the Flotterstone Inn we hit the chapel.

Doris has difficulty hearing and conversation was tricky over the noise of the car but luckily Katie had no trouble compensating by talking for two.

Rosslyn Chapel itself is a bit of a bombsite just now. The have had a huge metal roof over it for a while now to ket it dry out and are currently dismantling it. There are temporary portakabin toilets and piles of grey bricks beside the wire fences and heavy plant. Inside is as beautiful as ever, though they now operate a no photo policy (nothing to do with the postcards for sale in the tat shop). We caught a tour but for some reason Kit was reluctant to listen so he and I were happy to wait down in the vault, then outside in the running around area.

Doris deserves some respect - at 84 she is chumming Katie round Europe, talking about her next holiday to New Zealand and how she will take Katie's sister on a similar trip in three years when she is 16...

Up North for October

I've had a cracking few days recently - the October holiday week is always good: it lacks the pressure of the summer holidays, where good weather and "plans" are paramount, and it prefaces the pressure of the Christmas holiday with its family driven agenda and financial aftermath. The tattie holiday is a real holiday, where autumn's colours and the early bite of a cold wind only serve to make Scotland a nicer place to be when you have nothing to do.
And where nicer in Scotland than Speyside? I was lucky that there was a coincidental coming together of the holiday, my birthday and the Aviemore Half Marathon, my second after premiering in Glasgow last month. We headed north after school on Friday and stayed with Dad in Carrbridge, steadfastly refusing all but the skimpiest of curries in preparation for my run on Sunday. It turned out to be a lovely day, until lunchtime anyway, and the run was a picturesque, friendly and fun affair. 109th out of 996 and no lasting injuries sounds like a good day out to me.
So Monday saw poor Lorna heading south to go back to work on the train. Meanwhile Kit and I continued north to Tain for a couple of nights. This is another opportunity for him to be a spoiled brat but for me not to mind because I get some quiet time - and today, my quiet time took me to Croick Church, an exceptionally special place to me. Special for a number of reasons - it has big history. Follow the link to learn more, but suffice to say the church is linked forever to the Highland Clearances in a way that enters your blood and gives you The Shivers every time you visit. I'm not sure why, but inside the curch manages to be many degrees colder than outside, whether summer or winter. The people of Glen Calvie were mustered there before being thrown / chased / burned out of their houses and homes in 1845, and famously the church has scratches on the windows where they testified to the sadness and loss they were being put through.
All in all I spent a good few hours there with my camera trying to get some nice in and outside shots of the church and its grounds. I didn't feel spooked at all, it's a very peacful place to be, just so cold. Until, that is, a conker got blown from a tree and banged against one of the windows: then I shat myself. More pics to follow once I get them edited and Flickr'd.
Back home tomorrow - rehearsals tomorrow night then possibly an Edinburgh photography day on Thursday.

Budapest - The Thursday

Ok, let's get the incredulous looks and eye-rolling over with first: yes, I left Lorna in Scotland on Valentine's Day to spend a couple of nights with "the lads" in Budapest. Right. Let's say no more about it.

Unfortunately when I booked my bargain Ryanair £70 return tickets (including "priority boarding"...) I foolishly thought that a 9.05am flight from Prestwick would be easy to make on time, only travelling from Edinburgh and Scotland's travel infrastructure being so good. So, cut to 3am on the 14th of February to see me catching the night bus into Waverly to make the 3.30am bus to Prestwick, arriving at 5.30am. Any other way would have got me there after check-in had closed. I was vindicated when the bus passengers were more Hungarian than Scot. Still, plenty of time to check in and bask in the early morning light. Of WHSmith's fridge.

Priority boarding worked a treat. It was worth the £3 just to see the poor people being shunted out of my queue. See ya, suckers!

Calum was due to pick me up at 1.30pm in Budapest, so when Ryanair announced with a trumpet fanfare (really) that they were 25 minutes early and Calum's text revealed he would be a half hour late, this left me an extra hour in the airport to...well, hide. It was only once on Hungarian soil that I realised my complete lack of any knowledge of the language or culture, a combination which in many places can get you shot. Apparently blowing your nose then checking the hankie can get you kneecapped in Turkey, and wars have started in Eastern Asia over the "pull my finger" joke. I thought it safer to sit clutching my bag and avoiding eye contact for the time being. I guess international sign language was always available to me but hungry as I was, I just couldn't bring myself to point at a piece of pizza while rubbing my tummy and offering my wallet. Not only would that require three hands, what if he asked me whether I wanted a bag? It was unlikely he would reciprocate by rubbing the bag seductively while winking at me.

Calum arrived in time to save me from an international incident and set about showing me the city. Unexpectedly one of the highlights came a few moments later - the appropriately named (by me) "Porn Guy". Where some people were begging from the cars as they sat in traffic, and others tried with little success to sell flowers, Porn Guy had gone one further and was selling roadside dirty magazines. He was draped with them, hanging from strings round his neck, filling both hands and surrounding him in grubby piles. I would have taken a picture but traffic was flowing freely and Calum unkindly refused to reverse back up the dual carriageway.

We then spent a cultural, relaxing afternoon visiting some of the sights of central Budapest, including...


Heroes' Square

The Basilica of St.Stephen

The Chain Bridge

The Parliament, and also spent some time dwelling over

this Holocaust memorial on the banks of the Danube.

(I had decided to go all out on the tourist thing so clicked away with my nice new camera with carefree abandon. Then came home, deleted 80% of the guff and crowed over the ones I liked.)

Jon and Mark's journey from Toulouse to Paris to Munich to Budapest (makes me seem a little petty for moaning about the early bus, doesn't it?) had encountered fog, and after a short spell worrying they might not make it at all we learned they would actually be a couple of hours late, allowing Calum and I time to eat before picking them up. His Hungarian is very good after 4 years in the country which made me remarkably more confident, even smiling at waiters and visiting the toilet on my own.

Having collected them from the airport we headed back to Calum and Zsanett's flat, politely ignoring the bulldozer knocking down the house next door. That evening the five of us went to a very traditional little restaurant hand picked for its authenticity where we ate soup (very big in Budapest) followed by a stew with rice and roast vegetables. And pickled cucumber. Mark made the mistake of tasting his cabbage garnish first and was not allowed to forget it. Making tiny mistakes and getting hammered for it is a running theme when we get together, so much so it's a wonder anybody dares talk at all. Many beers later we returned home to sort out sleeping places, Zsanett having wisely gone to her Mum's for the duration to leave us to it.

I'll do the day 2 write up tomorrow. To rush it now would be a true injustice to a most enjoyable and surreal day. Until then you can read Jon's take on events here...>

Another Hogmanay

Having enjoyed reading Jon's teary, nostalgic stories of Christmas past, I decided some reminiscing of my own wouldn't be out of place.

Christmas for us was usually spent in Dundee where your enjoyment of the festive season was generally measured by how much food you could consume between dawn and dusk - not eating meant not enjoying and that would simply not be tolerated. From the bacon stuffed rolls which left your dressing gown smeared with butter grease and tomato sauce to the industrial vats of prawn cocktail, it was heaven for a 9 year old with an appetite. Indeed there is a well worn family story where Gillian, who could be relied upon to work herself up into a vomitus over-excited wreck on Christmas Eve, was only cured of her boke by the ingestion of two cheese and tomato pizzas.

Another lasting memory is of the organisation involved when squeezing four or five adults and up to six children, plus guests, in a cottage originally built to house a crofter and possibly his wife. Place mats were laid each meal time in the livingroom on every available horizontal surface. A middle spot on a table was nice as there was less chance of things ending up on the floor, or of one of the dogs helping you to finish. Seats near the fire were at a premium earlier in the day when the house had yet to heat up, but by evening the furnace blast meant that only the cat and dogs could get within a few feet of it. This gave them the best view of the (off) TV and a perfect vantage point from which to let off casual farts in the direction of your Vienetta and Ice Magic. Feeding aside, the sleeping and washing arrangements alone were impressive enough. Bunk beds and inflatable beds were frequent friends as you were given your place in the sleeping hierarchy.

We were a family who still did "turns" - I did a mean Margaret Thatcher impression, and once an optimal amount of alcohol had been consumed the various uncles and aunts from many generations would indulge in some music hall classics to pass the time. One advantage that we had over the Broons was a "television", but this was in the days when the war for children's minds was still being optimistically fought by parents who believed two things - 1) that family derived entertainment was more fun than Tiswas and 2) this was a fight which could still be won. We could debate if either, both or none of these is true but it won't help me in 1982.

Anyway. Hogmanay as a child was perhaps less exciting, barring the thrill of being allowed up late. Once or twice we were taken along to parties then put to bed before being "gently awoken" at early o'clock when it was time to go home. I would not wish this torture on any child and will try to avoid it with my own. Jon's blog reminded me of those first few "allowed out" New Years when the rules of social etiquette were still being learned, then ignored. Hogmanay evening would be spent touring the houses of...people we knew. Calling them all "friends" would be a bit false considering many of them I have never, and will never see again, but we knew enough "friendly people" to organise or instigate quite the tour of Tain. Traps would be laid for us, though; on arrival at Tower Gardens for example I would be presented with a generous basin of neat whisky from my host or hostess which would then be refilled at a pace Oliver Reed might have called "a bit much". It was all my teen male ego could do to drink them as fast as they were presented. But then later in the evening any of my visits to the toilet would be accompanied by sharp intakes of breath and some tut-tutting as I weaved my wibbly wobbly way past vases and display dinner services before engaging other guests in inappropriate conversation. These truly were "the good old days". As time went on Jon and I became less of the social butterfly type and concentrated more on becoming connoisseurs of witty stories, droll recollections and the contents of other people's drinks cabinets.

We also frequently set out to prove that the right amount of alcohol prevented hypothermia. When it's 2 in the morning, and snowing, and you've been drinking whisky since midday, and someone says to you, "Let's go down to the beach" you really should say "No." But the memories of running my hands through my hair to dislodge the ice only serve to celebrate the anti-freeze properties of The Famous Grouse.

So, tonight Lorna and I will hit Tain town centre again after all these years. We are attending the Hogmanay street party organised, I think, by the Tain Gala Association Ceilidh band, fireworks (one assumes) and home by 00:10 if all goes to plan...

Let a smile be your umbrella, and you'll end up with a face full of rain.

So it hasn't been the kindest of summers, as far as the weather goes. It feels a little churlish to gripe about showers and puddles when mother nature is slowly washing England into the sea one blocked drain at a time, but I reserve the right to expect more good days in six weeks than we've had. However maybe that just makes the sunny spells all the more valued.

My last post announced Jon and my plans to head north and visit the beautiful Sandwood Bay...so we did. A splendid time was had by both: the weather held up for us until late into the evening. The bay has little in the way of firewood but we found what appeared to be part of a wooden crate to burn - turned out it was made of solid, woodlike plastic which burnt very well, though perhaps was not the nicest thing to sit beside and inhale from. After family packs of Supernoodles, a couple of beers and a snifter of Laphroig we turned in, and next day were lucky enough to get a dry walk out and a most pleasant all day breakfast at Kinlochbervie's Fisherman's Mission - all the anus and eyelid you can eat for a fiver!

Our family week to Mull was everything we'd hoped it might be. The race from Tain to Oban via the Co-Op (then trying to stuff a week's worth of food into an already obscenely overpacked car) was a challenge, but once in the queue for the ferry I could relax and inspect the quality of the Oban port authority's seagull poo sweeping. Not bad, actually, but I could have done better.

Once on Mull we found our cottage and despite being a bit damp and smelling a bit like a wet dog we were pleased to call it home for the week. Walks, cycles, a visit to Iona and Tobermory kept us busy and Kit loved sticking his head into sandy puddles on the beach. Well, what are wellies for if not to fill with water? We lit the fire a few nights for no other good reason than it's fun to light fires and Lorna somehow took the Mull Scrabble title at three games to two. I managed to get lots of school stuff reading done - the benefit of no TV or internet cannot be over stressed here - and we wended our way home a week later feeling holidayed and happy.

Now back home my assignment is submitted, Kit is walking and babbling like never before and Lorna is...wait for this...getting a bicycle tomorrow! She ventured out three times on my mountain bike while on holiday. (Lorna is not the most experienced, or confident of cyclists. She can't change gear if there is a car near - well, if she can even see a car, actually - and only recently has been able to move her hand over to ring the bell. Before that she relied on a firm clearing of the throat to warn walkers to dive out of the way.) The first time, in Tain, it poured with rain so much that we hid under a tree until, realising it was never going to stop, limping home 20 minutes later in defeat. Our second run took us from Tain to Inver and all was going well until two low flying jets knocked Lorna into a ditch. You see...knowing how much she likes low flying jets, after the first one buzzed us I spotted the second one and shouted, "Lorna, stop". I knew she couldn't cycle and look at the same time, but unfortunately she thought I shouted, "Lorna, look" and proved I was right. One bruised shin later (it started off as a broken leg, but then got better) and I was off to get the car to ferry her back safely on four wheels. The third go was much more successful, on Iona, but we both agreed the mountain bike was not ideal for her so she's chosen one of these instead. Ding ding!

More on the bike front - Mike and I have been testing ourselves at the Glentress and Innerleithen trails. The Glentress red route was enough for me, but still we dared the black route at Innerleithen and lived to tell the tale.

So what now? Well, cramming as much as I can into the last week of the holidays, trying to get out on the motorbike (new rear tyre, woohoo!) and avoiding "back to school dreams", I guess.

The horror of the Scottish barbecue...

So, Lorna's mummy pals have been asking for a while when she planned to host a barbecue. The date chosen was today, and didn't the rain just know it...

Thanks to the folk who showed up, and to the sun for an all too brief appearance. Now, where can we offload 6 tons of coleslaw and 200 sausages?

Who built the ark?

This is getting ridiculous... it has rained for a week and a half (part of Glasgow got washed away on Friday evening, so it's not all bad) Yesterday, however, we took delivery of our new outdoor summer table and I went out and bought a barbecue. Today we are buying some cycle kit for Lorna so once we get Kit's chair we can have lovely hazy days pedalling along the canal into town for coffees and ice cream.
We are completely deluding ourselves. Come on, summer.