Choicy White Boy

Saturday: Ditchling Beacon to Devil’s Dyke (route) (photos)
Sunday: Lewes Castle to Brighton (route) (photos)

Originally, this weekend, we had planned to train up to Gatwick and from there to take a trail along to Pooh Corner and the Hundred acre woods. We had that queued up for Sunday so decided to go for a walk on Saturday. Only we slept in on Sunday because Saturday’s walk tired us out, so we gave up Pooh Corner in favor of Lewes Castle. We took the train up to Lewes, spent some time in the castle, had a pub lunch and then found our way home on our bicycles.

So, Saturday, we walked from Ditchling Beacon to Devil’s Dyke. This is a hike that we’d been meaning to do for some time. Simon and I had ridden that path before, and it was one of the “bus-to-bus” hikes we’d read about some time ago. This is a well documented route mostly along the South Downs Way. It’s so great to have the downs in our back yard like that. We caught a bus up to the Beacon with a cranky bus driver who laid on the horn at kids darting across the street, wouldn’t open the door for an old lady 15ft from the bus stop while he was stuck at the light, etc. We got to see bus-repair in action though. We pull into one bus stop, the driver opens the door and a repairman steps on board, takes the cracked side mirror off, puts a new one on, adjusts it for the driver, steps off and away we go again.

Look there

From the parking lot, I show the girls where I had my spill the previous weekend and then we start up to the top of the hill where the Ordinance Survey marker is. After a diversion there, we’re off along the path. Coming toward us in clumps were a few “trailwalkers“. We weren’t especially impressed until we looked up afterward and found that the people we’d been seeing had already done something like 80 of the 100km they were going to walk that weekend. Clearly these people were going to finish the first day! Wow!

Jill Mill

Looking for a place to stop, I remembered that the “Jack and Jill” windmills were not too far into the walk, and suggested we go there. I am so glad we did. It turned out that Jill was open – at least the upstairs bit. It was so amazing to be in the windmill as the blades spun around. The whole mill creaked and rocked lightly in the wind – it was almost like being aboard ship. And so fascinating to see all of the gears and power-transfer mechanisms. Not to mention just the size and weight of the blades. I’m often astonished at the feats of engineering that have gone into “simple” things and “Jill Mill” was no exception.

We continued our hike after that, watching more trailwalkers come toward us, making our way along the edge of a golf course, climbing up out of a valley, and winding up at Devil’s Dyke no problem. We did just miss one bus though, so we ended up needing to wait for not quite an hour and a half for the next one. Fortunately, there’s a pub there so the time passed pretty quickly.

Lewes Castle

Then Sunday we slept in. Deciding what to do given that we felt like we needed a full day for the trek out to Pooh Corner, we settled on Lewes Castle. Back in ’08 we tried to take the train to the castle, but it ended up being a bus (they were working on the track) and the castled turned out to be closed (for renovation.) It was dark and wet that day. Today was the complete opposite. The train ran smoothly and on-time. We had no problems getting our bikes on and off, and it was a lovely sunny day. We had talked about riding there and taking the train back, but we wanted to be sure to have time at the castle and had we done things in that order, it would have been riskier.

An archer
takes aim

So, we took the train there, biked up the hill from the station to the castle, paid our admission and started in. There’s not a lot to the castle, but what was there was really neat. The obligatory clockwise-ascending circular stairs (better for defenders from above), the stone work, the crenelated turrets, the cross-shaped windows for archers, etc. And lots of plaques explaining this thing or that. There were even clothes to try on, a kiddie crane for “building a castle” and so on. Not to mention gorgeous views of English countryside. It really was a neat spot.

Carolyn descends

Just outside, we grabbed a pub lunch and accidentally came across a “Thomas Paine lived here” house, and tested my map-reading skills as I planned our route back. It turned out quite well except that one spot that I thought was a bridle way was actually a footpath and the footpath was actually up several flights of stairs. Once we had that sorted out though, we trekked across a rarely-used road, over beautiful hill and dale, up a mountainside so steep Sam asked if it was a cliff (I even had to walk bits of it – only because I was towing Sam, I’m sure. *cough* *cough*). And finally, back down into Brighton. It really was a lovely ride on a lovely day – made more achingly so by the brevity of our time here.

• Read More »

The route with
Simon

Two weekends ago, I went out with Simon and we tooled around in the woods and on bridle trails (usually!) for 20-odd miles. My rides with Simon have been a delight, if not exactly purposeful. Like any riding, it’s only a matter of making the time for ‘em. Cycling remains for me the one form of exercise that I don’t think of as exercise, but as fun. We mainly find our way up into the downs. This time, we finally completed a ride that we’d meant to do before when he started dropping ball bearings out of his headset (oops!) – Ditchling Beacon to Devil’s Dyke. This is also a “bus-to-bus” hike we’d talked about doing as a family. More fun on the bike, quicker and didn’t have to take the bus as part of it, but not as family-friendly.

AC on the
Capital to Coast
ride

Then, last weekend, I did the Capital to Coast bike ride (60 miles). (It’s still not too late to offer support and help me raise my target goal of £200 for the Capital to Coast ride!) This was also quite fun. I started out with some mates from work going slowly, but looked behind me and saw that I’d already lost them so pushed myself instead. Breaks every 10-15 miles with snacks and water made it a pretty straight forward trip. I finished it off in about 5.5 hours. It feels like I should have done better. I rode pretty well, but definitely took advantage of the rest stops. There were also road-side photographers. I had no idea what they were doing, so I waved at all of them. Turns out, they were taking pictures of the riders to sell back to us. I am far more interested in pictures that make me look like a serious cyclist. Fortunately, there was one that has a bit of that look, so I did buy it:)

Martyn Ashton
does precision riding

Did another 30 miles this weekend. Just out-and-back. I intended to go to Beachy Head to see what it looked like, but traffic was heavy, I’d forgotten sunscreen, getting a little tired. Turning back, I realized how much the wind had been to my back. I slogged home, and it seemed like it was getting worse and worse. When I finally stopped, I realized the rear wheel had been brutalized somehow, and the breaks were rubbing almost continuously. I’d been working against hills, wind and breaks. After that ride, we went back down to the “Paddle Round The Pier” where we got to watch Martyn Ashton and Blake Samson on the Animal Relentless Bike Tour.

Blake Samson’s
arial acrobatics

What a blast. While Carolyn most enjoyed Blake’s aerial acrobatics, I was primarily a fan of the precision control and balance required by Martyn’s trial riding. I’d always been impressed by trial riding, but I’d never seen any in-person, and while this was more stunt than trial specifically, it was enough to keep me up last night pouring over youtube videos of trial riding, and contemplating picking up an Ashton Diamondback trials bike while I’m here as they don’t carry ‘em back in the states.

More pictures from the “Animal Relentless Freestyle Bike Tour sponsored by Vito Sport, and Team Ashton Diamondback” can be found in my gallery.

• Read More »

I just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. I also deleted a lot of users. If one of them was you and your actually reading this, sorry. Best I could tell it was sleeper spam accounts. But basically, if your email address is in the .ru or .pl domains, and your “real name” doesn’t match your email address at all, I figured you and I weren’t on very close terms.

• Read More »

On Friday, it was supposed to rain. We were going to go shopping. I needed a replacement keychain – my “England” one from Heathrow had broken under the strain of daily use. I needed a hat (CF my post wherein I left my hat on the train on the way up). I was interested in a sweater of Scottish wool. We have various birthdays coming up that we need to provide for. We had even considered Pitlochry’s Children’s Adventure Playground figuring it would be more interesting than staying in the cottage — even in the rain.

Mind the Gap”

We were quite surprised therefore, to be having breakfast in a shaft of sun piercing the cottage. Like Blair Castle, Carolyn had Dunkeld and Birnam on her wishlist. So, we girded ourselves for hiking throwing together snacks, jackets, gaiters, etc and headed out. First stop: Heathergems. It had been recommended to us by Nat & bk in particular, and we took care of much of our gift acquisition there. A stop at Moffat Wollens got me my keychain, but I declined the hat there, and couldn’t articulate the need for a sweater enough to justify the purchase to myself or my spouse. From there, on to the train station.

Beatrix Potter Garden

The ticket agent asked us how we’d liked our trip yesterday to Blair Atholl. Small town? We gushed over it, and got our tickets to the next stop South. Our Blair Atholl trip had been to the next stop North. Our tickets South were a little more expensive and the trip was one of 12 minutes on the train instead of just 10.

Upon arrival, we were in the midst of one of the “occasional” showers, but they all passed pretty quickly, including that one. We spent a little bit of time in the Beatrix Potter gardens there, accidentally started to go into a little Potter museum which would have cost us £1 ea had we decided to continue, and we asked after where to get hiking info. With only a little bit of bickering, we decided it must be time for lunch and just after the info center where we picked up the hiking map and some info, we went to “Spill the Beans Café” which was right next to “Going Potty” – a DIY pottery place.

The nice lady at the info center recommended a short out-and-back hike based on Sam’s age. I was sure we could do more and picked out a couple of loops for us to consider. We started out on the proposed route as the info center lady had sold us on Ossian’s cave and Ossian’s Hall. As we walked along, a UPS delivery van zipped past us. Right behind it, a FedEx van of the same dimension. A while later, we saw the UPS van ahead of us again heading across our path. Again, the next vehicle behind it was the FedEx van. In the meanwhile, it started to hail. Not huge hail, but certainly the largest and most memorable I’d been in for a while. As with the occasional showers, it had passed almost by the time I’d gotten my rain gear out of the backpack and on.

Sure enough, the hall was an impressive view of an impressive waterfall. The “cave,” a curious spectacle. The further walk wonderfully pleasant as we passed through woods and farmland. More than anything we’d done so far, this reminded me of our various Appalachian walks even to the point that I wanted to own some of the land for no purpose more than to own a piece of beauty and to preserve a place to walk in the future. For those familiar with the “Coco” idea, I even envisioned the compound being in (well, outside) Birnam and Dunkeld for the literary connection with Potter and Shakespeare.

Of all of our walks so far, this was the most populous. As we got farther into the walk, it thinned out such that in the middle bits, we again felt fairly alone. As we were following along the Braan river, we did see several rapids and waterfalls. We climbed through dell and forest and came across the remnants of a small community abandoned by the Industrial Revolution.

Back into Birnam, again with an hour before the next train. We decided again to wait to dine back in Pitlochry rather than rush through a meal at a place we’d not yet discovered. Instead, we found our way to the Birnam Oak. I took lots of pictures while Carolyn reveled in the history and connection to Shakespeare’s “Scottish Play”. Finally, we had seen a playground between the train station and the Oak and we gave our very tired daughter an opportunity to find her reserves of energy to clamber, slide and spin.

We made the train back to Pitlochry where I got a “true taste of Mexico” in the form of (actually quite good) fajitas from Victoria’s – where we’d had our first dinner in Pitlochry as well. Finally, back to the cottage to get ourselves packed up for our Saturday of train travel back to Brighton.

Sam recounted the following to me as her description of our hike:

We walked through a couple of small tree graveyards. We stopped for little treats, and snacks, and rests. And I pretended to be a silk, gauzy princess. We walked 5 or 6 miles. We watched some waterfalls. We found a little cave. We watched some people swimming [tubing -ED] in the waterfall on the way. There were a lot of rocks on the way. I was really tired a lot. We walked through a couple of forests. We saw some baby trees on the way. There were a little bit of uphills. It was really mossy and grassy. We followed the brown man for a little ways. [Trails were indicated by colored person-symbols pointing the way ED] . We took the train there and we explored through the Peter Rabbit garden. And we stopped at a playground. We stopped to look at big Birnam Oak tree. After the playground, we went to the train station and caught our train. That is all I can remember.

And really, that’s all of note I can remember at the moment as well.

• Read More »

Thursday, we again had an excellent lie in, and a lazy breakfast in the cottage wherein we discussed what we might want to do. There were three hikes that I had in mind as possibilities. 1) The mountain we’d skirted around on our Killiecrankie walk, 2) the loop near the top of the mountain we’d traversed on our Strathtay walk or 3) further up the Tummel river to see “Queen’s View“. The problem was that 2 of those were hilly, and one was long. We didn’t want to continue to tax Sam, and Carolyn’s feet were causing her some problems from ill-fitting hiking boots.

We briefly considered alternate activities. There’s a row boat hire on Loch Faskally that we considered, but eventually rejected because Sam and Carolyn would be too sedentary. There is a cycle hire just down from us that we went to visit. We ultimately rejected it too in part from cost, in part from my concern that I would find a heavy hybrid without at least toeclips a frustrating experience, and also b/c Carolyn was worried about it also being too taxing. So instead, we took the train up to Blair Atholl.

Blair Atholl is home to Blair Castle – a 5-star visitor attraction according to the Scottish Tourism Board, and it’s something Carolyn was keen to see since we were here. But our real purpose was for hiking. We had a couple of different “Pitlochry Hikes” guides, and one of them had a loop near Blair Atholl that looked easy enough to short-circuit should we find we need to, so we headed off.

I led us astray pretty quickly. Just after crossing the Bridge of Tilt, I led us along the road instead of the forested path near the road. In my defence it was hard to tell the difference from the scale of the map. It didn’t take us long to find my error though and to find our way down to the path that took us up the river Tilt. We followed this along with occasional diversions for some clambering along rocks next to the river (mostly on my part). This path eventually dumped us on the road up near the “Old Bridge of Tilt”.

In trying to figure out where to go next, we got rather cross with each other. This made it clear we needed to have some lunch. We did so down a small dirt road next to some tilt-y tributary. Even afterward, we had some trouble making out where to go. Both the map for this hike and the general Ordinance Survey (OS) map indicated a path that we wanted to take. The actual planned hike continued along the road, but we wanted to hike in the woods. Eventually, we sussed out what seemed reasonable for it. The main problem with what we figured out was that the very beginning of it went through someone’s front yard, around their house where they appeared to be mid-project on some refurbishment effort and then out a back gate of theirs into what appeared to be their horse pasture. After much hemming and hawing and re-reading the bit on the OS map about rights-of-way in Scotland, we took the path. A friendly white horse came up to greet us, but was ultimately disappointed when I had no treat for it. Our feeling of trespass continued as the gate we next came to was not easily transited. We opted for “over” instead of “untie the rope holding it closed.” I was glad when we got far enough ’round the arc of the hill that we were no longer in direct sight of the house.

The path lead us into the woods, in a way that indicated it was neither a well-used nor a well-maintained trail. There was a fallen tree across it and no evident re-made path around it. This led me to doubt my conclusion about where we were on the OS map, so I backed us out of the forest and took us up the hill at the edge of the trees and got us onto some other farmland. The shape of the land and the hearty fence that blocked our path soon confirmed I should not have doubted my original assessment, so back down onto the blocked path we went.

We skirted that first fallen tree. We climbed over the second. Around the third. Over/under the fourth according to our hight. And then it got worse. “It looks like we’re walking in a tree graveyard!” exclaimed Sam at one point. Nonetheless, the original road/trail was still evident even if at some points we had to divert from it to get around so many downed trees that we could not even see where it lay. We did make our way back to it though, and it did eventually lead us to a junction with a wider, better maintained trail where the suggested hike joined the adventure hike we had chosen in its place.

This trail dumped us out along a “gorgeous steep hillside all green and gold and speckled with munching, watchful sheep and their playful lambs” as Carolyn put it. Indeed, there were sheep aplenty, and the frolicking lambs were a delight to watch. We marched onward finding dashing, babbling brooks, weathered trees on craggy hillsides and the wonder of a 4-year old. “Daddy, isn’t it interesting that sheep live in their food and in their toilets?”

We took a fortuitous snack-break near a signpost. I call it fortuitous because again I was reading the map imagery rather than the written instructions for the hike. The instructions that said “Turn left across a stile into thick woodland – take care as this junction could be easily missed.” As a result, we did not miss this junction.

As we were snacking, a pair of jets rocketed overhead. I’d be interested to see an aviation map, but it certainly seems like this area must be under military airspace. We’ve seen some low-flying military jets for many of our days here. And these were certainly low-flying – probably 500 feet AGL though they seemed even closer because we could feel their passing in our bodies as they thundered by. We remarked on being glad that we were in peacetime (relatively) and that they were friendly fighters (relatively).

Not long after, we came down and crossed the River Tilt on Gilbert’s Bridge, and headed back south toward Blair Atholl. After crossing (somewhat nervously) through the Jubilee firing range, we again diverted from the suggested hike to take a trail closer to the river. This we did, and had a lovely stroll back into Blair Atholl. One of the strangest things in my mind was the Atholl Caravan Park in the shadow of the Blair Castle. I understand the appeal of modular, “mobile” housing, but in my mind they are like plastic flowers. They are missing the soul of that which they mimic.

Back in Blair Atholl, we had a decision to make. We had not quite an hour before our train back to Pitlochry. We could have a rushed dinner there, or a later dinner back in Pitlochry. We chose the latter, but were turned out from two “open” restaurants in Pitlochry as they were “just about” to close. We finally wound up with Chinese take-away (for me) and left-over Indian food for the girls. I also cracked open my un-chillfiltered Edradour. It turned out to be a great meal back at the cottage, and the end to another wonderful holiday day.

• Read More »

We’re back from another very nice, if somewhat wearying hike. This time, we walked “over the hill” from Pitlochry to Strathtay. The hike was nice, though

View back
over Pitlochry

today, the boots weren’t as magic, and Botticelli, while still engaging wasn’t as thoroughly distracting as it was the day before. Therefore, we had a somewhat more recalcitrant hiker than a couple of days ago. Still, all things considered, I’m pleased with her capability and willingness.

The hike itself was quite nice. We went through the southern part of town, under the tracks, over the river Tummel, across the highway and started climbing first past a farm and then

Grassy Trail

into the woods. There were places where the trail was quite muddy from the recent rains. There was a section that was lush with moss and almost glowing green from the ground, though the trees were still rather bare. We came along a stone circle(named Clachan an Diridh), a logging road where we were passed by a huge logging truck heading back into the woods for more timber removal, and then over a large stile and back into fields for the trek down into Strathtay.

Clachan an Diridh

On the way down into Strathtay, the trail passed a sheep carcass in a way that could simply not be avoided. So, we talked to Sam about it. She was enthralled and full of questions. “Why didn’t it know not to come up here?” “Did you look inside that one?”

Queen of Stile

“Why are the bones still sticking out?” She said that tomorrow she would write a story about the dead things we encountered in our walking so that we wouldn’t forget!

Further down, we crossed a rushing, burbling tributary to the river Tay, passed through some more mud, some more grassy trail with trees arched overhead and then turned the corner into a golf course! Seems like one can hardly hike ’round here without coming across one.

Finally, down into Strathtay itself – the site of a chocolatier of some note, and the site of a recent tragedy – drowning of Simon Fletcher.

Two of the 3 restaurants were not serving when we got there. Fortunately the third was. Sam pecked at her food, spilt her milk and generally flopped around the table. Carolyn had more “excellent” soup, and I quite enjoyed my “Brie and Bacon”

A fowl trip back

We had been told that we could take the bus back from there, and given Sam’s state, we were more than a little inclined to. We came up with a different plan though – she’d ride in the Ergo up the hill, and would walk on the flat and down parts. This mostly worked, except that on the way over, she developed a distaste for slugs because she didn’t want to step on them, and there were black slugs all over the route mainly on the flatter part at the top of the hill. Nonetheless, some chocolate, some Botticelli and many renditions of “Señor Don Gato” got the plan through. Needless to say, having carried a 30+-pound kid up nearly 2 miles of “hill” has nearly tuckered me out.

We had a nice (but cher) dinner at the Indian restaurant. They’d not even heard of Edradour – the distillery less than 2 miles away, so I had a wee dram of “Highland Park” which was quite nice as well.

• Read More »

A relaxed day in and near town. The morning consisted of some errands (buy postcards, scan documents for closing, buy a couple presents, some groceries, drop clothing off at the launderette). Lunch was sandwiches from the Scottish Deli. After lunch, we hiked through the Black Spout wood to reach the smallest distillery in Scotland – Edradour.

We watched a video, took a tour and bought some gift-Scotch and some personal Scotch. The personal stuff is “Un-chillfiltered” meaning it would go cloudy if poured over ice (or even stored in a chilly place – gotta get it out of Scotland quickly!) The chillfilitering process is to remove some of the oily/fatty stuffs that’s introduced during distillation process, but which will produce a haze when chilled. So often distilleries will chill the spirit and filter out this residue. But of course, it also removes some of the body and flavor. Our guide likened it to making a vegetable soup and then removing the vegetables. We got bottle 779 of 905 from Cask number 120. Distilled in March of ’99 and bottled in September of ’09, it’s a 10-year, like the bulk of the Edradour line-up.

It was neat to watch the process, and see the smallest still allowed by Scottish law (otherwise, it would be so small you could hide it from the excise people!) I wish I understood it all better though. Apparently Edradour was purchased by a fellow (Andy?) about 8 years back, and Andy’s trying to innovate – introducing experimental peaty flavors, different casks, etc. “‘Innovate or Die’, you know, and Andy’s an innovator” said our guide. I have to say, that’s one of my many retirement fantasies. Buy a small distillery in Scotland, help them evolve while still maintaining core strengths. I’d love to chat with this Andy guy over some drinks if only I knew what he liked.

After that, it was back in to town, gather our laundry, dinner at a pub, some further reading of Alice in Wonderland, some petville (purely for Sam, of course), blogging and off to bed. We have an idea of what tomorrow’s hike will be. We’ll be heading to the south-west either to Strathtay or around Carra Beag and the Old Pictish road. Or, if the magic boots hold out – both?

• Read More »

Today, we hiked.

By the weather forecast, this looked to be the best day of the week, and as we were fresh, and came here to walk around, we set out for a hike.

We got off to a leisurely start. We had breakfast in our cottage, got ourselves packed up and headed off (after a quick trip to the Indian restaurant where we’d eaten the night before to pick up the rucksack we’d left there by accident!)

We’d been looking at a number of maps and websites with Pitlochry walks, but were most inspired by one of the maps hanging on the wall in the cottage. A blown-up version of the map from the “detailed leaflet” on this page. We knew we wanted to go to Killiecrankie, and from there, we’d figure it out.

We started out of town along the route I’d run on Sunday morning – a beautiful walk adjacent to the Golf Course. We saw some mountain peaks still snow-capped and we talked of weather. The trail continued around the golf course, but beyond the reach of the road, and finally cut into the woods. A bit of it had been expanded and re-surfaced to become a logging road, but judging by downed signs, the logging was done. We continued along into the “Pass of Killiecrankie” walking along what appeared to amount to the top of a retaining wall near the highway, finally cutting under the highway along a stream and then along a local “B” road and finally to the Visitor Centre. We decided to lunch here as there was a cafe on-site. We spent a bit of time (and a bit of money) in the Vistor Centre. Carolyn read to Sam from the myriad posters and scenes from the Battle of Killiecrankie and Sam was enchanted. She asked all kinds of clarifying questions, but I think ultimately didn’t understand why those people would do that to each other. Alas, I’m not sure I understand either.

After having re-charged there, we continued on into Killiecrankie proper and across the River Garry. From there we headed south until blocked by the Tummel river. We headed up-river then until we got to the Coronation Bridge. It was so neat to see a bridge like that just in the middle of the woods. We then continued along another B road until we could cross the Loch Faskally along the Culnie Footbridge and then back into Pitlochry.

All told, we walked about 11 miles. Sam walked most of the first 10 thanks to 3 things:

1. Chocolate. (Not unlike the Mars bars that powered me through my UK cycling during my youth.)
2. “Magic Boots” – we got her new hiking boots and she declared early in the hike that they were magic because she wouldn’t get tired on hikes while wearing them.
3. Botticelli – we introduced Sam to this game today and she loved it. We had to do people that all three of us would know, and when Sam and I were guessing Carolyn’s people, it was often torturous. But it kept her going longer than I ever would have expected.

For the last mile, she rode in the Ergo after finally having just petered out. Carolyn and I both took several pictures, but it’s too late to do more than upload them to the gallery and hope to provide a little more detail around them before it all fades.

Don’t know that I’m going to get up at 07:00 for my run tomorrow though.

• Read More »

I can’t count how many times I have looked on the back of a photograph hoping the photographer wrote down who those people are, or when or where the photo was taken. Well, it would actually be a fairly small number, but boy is it annoying when you want the data and it just isn’t there. Digital cameras will almost always automatically embed date information for you (and if not, then the software you pick them up with will!) Newer GPS (sat nav) enabled cameras will capture the “where” as well. But it’s still not automatic to capture the “who.”

iPhoto has this pretty cool feature where it’ll auto-identify people’s faces in the photos and give you a chance to name them. Like with most meta-data, I find myself quite variable in actually choosing to spend the time updating it. But this week, I’m on holiday in Scotland, so I can be a bit better about those sorts of little things in life. So, I was using the iPhoto names feature. For the most part, I was pretty impressed. It’s certainly cleverer software than I could write. But it also made some pretty funny mistakes. I thought I’d share a couple of those mistakes with you.

I will call you Nom!

Neighbors

The Black Spout, and uh whashername

• Read More »

OK, It’s not day 1 anymore, but it feels that way.

Train

Saturday we took a train to London’s Victoria station. Then we took a tube from there to King’s Cross station. From there, we took a train to Edinburgh. From there, we took another train to Pitlochry. On the long-haul train from London to Edinburgh, we were fortunate in that we had reserved seats at a table and the reserved seats across from us were unoccupied, as we only needed 2 tickets, because Sam is an “under 5″ but that meant we only got 2 seats. We arrived without event except that I’m pretty sure I left my hat on the London to Edinburgh train which is terribly disappointing. I guess another trip to Goorin Brothers is in order next time I’m back in SF. It was always a bit too small, but I’m still disappointed to have left it behind.

Once here in Pitlochry, we made our way to Craigroyston House (&lodge!) where we’re staying in the “self-catering cottage.” It’s a cute little place. The downstairs is a kitchen/dining room on one side and a living room on the other side. The stairs in the center t-off into two small bedrooms, each with its own tiny shower-room. A powder-room is tucked into one of the crevices of the T.

After being shown around the cottage, we went out to the co-op to pick up stuff for Sunday’s breakfast. Unfortunately, that made us late enough we missed entry to the restaurant we’d intended to go to. So we went to the next open one we found. It was fine. I had a “Mega-Burger”, Sam a Kid’s cheeseburger and Ca got Fish-n-Chips. Finally, we came home and all collapsed pretty readily.

Today (Sunday), I got up at 7 for a “run” – I’m still in the fairly early stages of a “couch to 10k” program. The run was inspiring. Running in the Scottish highlands was great. It was cool and overcast, but not cold enough to be unpleasant. My 5-ish mile run took me by a golf course, out of the little town and past some farmland, and even past 2 distilleries!

Sam in Black Spout Wood

When I got back, Carolyn was up and writing, and it wasn’t long before Sam was up. We breakfasted and headed out to the town. We got Sam her first pair of actual hiking boots (which saw a real workout later in the day) and back to the co-op for some lunch food for the day. Back to the cottage for lunch, we then went for a walk. It was nice. I took lots pictures of the waterfall “Black Spout” and we traipsed past both of the distilleries that I’d run past earlier in the day. On the way back, we found a playground that Sam played in, a cat that Carolyn and Sam pet, and came back through the parking lot of a curling rink that doesn’t look exceptionally open any more.

Black Spout

• Read More »