What we did on Bute

A regular feature of visits to Port Bannatyne is a game of petanque. There is a proper petanque piste, a club league and a committee to oversee them.

The park overlooks the new marina, which is beginning to take shape - the posts for the moorings are in now and I think they're aiming to open for the Easter holidays.

The village seems to be picking up a bit. Several of the tenement blocks are being refurbished, and a new 'multi-user' path is being made on the old tramway to Ettrick Bay. It might attract some of the tourists out of their coaches between there and Rothesay.

Saturday run

For once, I went on the Cosmic Saturday Run (Given the soreness of my left ankle and shin that may have been an error.). We went to Clachnaben for the race preview. I've never done the full route, and still haven't. It is quite a long way and the heather is quite tall. However, some men were seen burning patches around the grouse butts on Mount shade, so it might be better for the race itself.

I wasn't keeping up with the others so missed the traverse on the first hill and ended up wading through thigh deep heather to get back to the ridge. I returned through the lost valley between Mount Shade and Clachnaben, along the main path to the Glen Dye quarry car park and back to Greendams along the road. That was further than I thought...


A unusual view of Clachnaben, from the lost valley at the bottom of Mount Shade.

Glamaig

Me, some Cosmics and the bloke off the telly...

Ferry, Cross the...

Kyles of Bute, actually. Away to the In Laws for the weekend, involves a ride on the wee ferry at Colintraive.

Clever Bluetits

Our peanut feeder is a sort of rectangular one (short sides and top in wood and long sides and bottom in mesh) with a flap over a hole at one end to put the peanuts in through.

The Blue tits have worked out how to open this flap (it swing on a single nail) and lean in to get the nuts.

I like xkcd

A visitor

Not quite fairies at the bottom of the garden, but she'll do.

(Do excuse the state of my phone's zoom)

Is that it?

(Mrs Neighbour must want to go out - Mr Neighbour is shovelling their path)

This week I are mostly drawing

this..

Snow?

Roads

I was musing on the state of the roads in Aberdeen last night and I've come up with a theory.

I think the City Council can't afford Aberdeen and have decided to let the holes in the roads continue to open up until the city's swallowed whole and they don't have to worry about it anymore.

Either that or they're too chicken to ask First.

Been to see the men again...

We've been down to Crosby with my mum, for a walk on the prom and a look at the men. The prom at Crosby is built up with the rubble removed from Liverpool when the bomb sites were being cleared in the 50s and 60s. My mum says you can still find nice pieces of 30s tiles laying amongst it.


It was a bit misty and drizzly (I can't think of an english word for dreich), but the cloud lifted just enough to see the Wirral and the windmills on the docks and in the bay.

Mither Tap

A couple of weekends ago we went for a run around Bennachie. Bennachie is a range of tops and a plateau, with walks and bikeable trails all around it. I took this picture (phone camera) from the top of Craigshannoch looking towards Mither Tap. Mither Tap is an ancient descriptive hill name. Mither is a local word for mother, I'll leave you to look at the shape of the hill to figure the rest out. There's a fort and a tor on the top, and the views over Aberdeenshire are spectacular on a clear day.

While I should be working...

Messers Magpie and Blackbird are disputing ownership of the front garden. The dispute takes the form of turns of walking purposefully about the frozen lawn.
Mr Magpie has the edge, in regal pose and stride length...

New Bird

One of these just flew into our patio door. T'internet confirms it's a female Blackcap, who have brown caps. I've never seen one before. She flew away after a minute, so I think it was only her pride that was hurt...

The photo is from the British Trust for Ornithology website and was taken in Newmachar, which is just a few miles up the road from me. So maybe I should keep my eyes peeled for some more. And my other half swears blind he saw a lesser spotted woodpecker on the telegraph post yesterday. However, he has trouble telling a bluetit from a sparrow, so I'm not sure if I should believe him.

Edit: 15/12/09 The BTO link to the pic broke, so I've inserted a random flickr one.

Kelpies at Falkirk

I'm still not convinced that having a pair of enormous kelpie heads operating a lock on the Forth-Clyde canal is a good idea. I always thought kelpies were malevolent beings, with a taste for drowning and eating people. Perhaps people don't believe any more, or, I suspect more likely, just don't know their own folklore. The photo is of the maquettes currently on display (from Falkirk Council website).

Stonehead made me think about this the other day with his tale of an each uisge and now the story in the Guardian reports on the next phase of the sculpture work.

It seems that the idea of a water horse spirit - in varied guises from downright evil to a bit mischevious, slightly different for each cultural group - is (or was) a widespread northern european belief. Some of the differences appear to be driven by the location of the people. For example the Kelpie of the Scottish lowlands prefers rivers, while the Each Uisge, the northern Gaelic variety, haunts lochs. Coastal peoples, such as the Manx and Cornish, have salt water versions. The Ceffyl Dwr of Wales appears in both fresh and salt water - it also doesn't appear to eat people, but will kill them.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. The idea that so many of the Norse and Celtic cultures have such a similar belief intrigues me. I like it. I don't like the kelpies on the canal. That worries me.

Self Unemployment

Things take a while to set up, don't they? It turns out I can't register as self employed until I begin working as such, which seems a little odd, but who am I to question the wisdom of the Inland Revenue?

I opened a business bank account today, but won't get an account number for a few days - which I need to fill in the forms to pay my National Insurance when I do register with the IR. Mind you, Class 2 NI for self employed people is considerably cheaper than Class 1 Employers contributions (11% of salary). I wonder what that'll do to my pension (if pensions exist in 40 years time...).

Then there's the business insurance and professional indemnity, for which I have to fill in a 6 page form just to get a quote. I'm a little worried that they might then refuse me because I'm not qualified by any particular professional body.

Nothing's easy, is it? But I was expecting it to be worse. I don't know how, but just worse.

Oh, and we still have no heating. But the plumber is coming in the morning, so fingers crossed...

What have I been doing since August?

Well, I thought I'd blogged more recently than August, but apparently not.
So, since then I have

had a sort of unofficial blogmeet at Ben Nevis with Mr Uhdd
run in the Comrie Relays
run at Morven (and wasn't last)
been made redundant (construction always goes first in a recession)
got part time contract work in building conservation with some one who'll help me with my MSc thesis (so may be the redundancy will turn out to be a good thing)

(edited for spelling 24-11-08)

OMM 2008

So, I'm willing to bet that the conditions at the OMM were not quite as bad as the media are making out. I'll get the story later when my other half gets home - he and his sister spent the night in her car having made it back to the car parks. It must have been bad for the event to be called off for the first time in its history, but the competitors are required to be prepared for spending a night out in wild country at the end of October.
(See also UpHillDownDale for Mr Uhdd's version of events).

Dufftown Highland Games

On 26th July we went over to Dufftown for the Highland Games, mainly because he wanted to run the Ben Rinnes race but also because we'd not been to a games before. I wasn't daft enough to try to run this one, so opted for tea and strawberries and watching the heavyweight and lightweight events in the games field.

The race takes about 2 hours for the winner. There was quite a collection of hillrunners other halves waiting for the winner - we'd all spotted that there were 4 guys up from Bowland and Calder Valley and I was wondering how good they must be to make the trip up. It turned out that one of them was rather good. As we were waiting in came reports of Sean Bolland, who held his lead to win. Last year's winner, Brian Marshall, came in third.

That night we went to Tomintoul. We stopped at the A'anside Studio and bought some prints then went to The Clockhouse for dinner. It was really nice food - I think we should go back.

On Sunday we went mountain biking from Cock Bridge to Fords of Avon. It was a 35 mile round trip, but wasn't too bad as we took our time. We had a lovely big portion of chips at the pub and watched the baby housemartins in the herb pots.