Its diesel you idiot.

Van @ Braemar

Having finished work for the holiday's we went off for the weekend to Braemar.

I spent most of the time after that working on a new website for myself, publicising my landscape photography, Northlightimages.

Once Christmas itself was over we made off for Teesside again, stopping off at Mortonhall in Edinburgh. There was some high winds forecast so we set off on the afternoon and rushed for Edinburgh, in the rush I accidentally put in petrol instead of diesel, bringing the journey to an abrupt halt outside of Dundee. Anyway, managed to get a pick up, drain and back on the road in about 2 1/2  hours, but it cost £240 plus the £50 wasted on the petrol, hopefully a lesson well learnt. Waking up in Edinburgh on new years eve we heard the Forth road bridge has been closed to all but cars so we missed that at least.

In England and I had the chance of a couple of photography location visits, Paddys hole at the South Gare and High Force, both on the river Tees. We stopped with the kids for about 3 days before our return to Aberdeen via Mortonhall again, the journey home was incident free.

Planning this years France trip, I will be putting some work into the van as well as more walking and photography.

Soon be Christmas

Millstone hill, Bennachie forrest, Aberdeenshire.

Just felt the need to make at least one blog entry before November was out. Its been pretty quiet, a couple of geocaching days in the jeep and mostly work.

Now its looking forward to the Christmas break, with a visit to the kids, maybe take in Durham and a stop over in Edinburgh for the new-year festivities, plenty of opportunities for photography and geocaching along the way.

In the meantime we got our fastest FTF (first to find), to cut a short story shorter the cache was secured 15 mins after the email came in, as it was around the corner in Old Aberdeen, once secured it was into St Machar bar for a celebratory wee dram.


Started running a few weeks ago, mostly too keep fit and
in a effort to loose a few pounds as I see I am borderline
for my ideal weight. Seems to be doing me some good and
I get a buzz out of it.

700th Geocache

Grouse up a hawthorn bush.

17th to 24th of October.

The October break brought us our 700th cache find, on a week trip to Northumberland, a return to Hayfield and back to see the kids on Teesside.

First stop was Dunstan Hill with a very interesting geotrail around Berwick on Tweed, looking at the areas visited by the painter L,S, Lowry, it was only recently discovered that Lowry holidayed here on a regular basis, I wasn't a great fan of his work but the trail did change my opinion towards it for the better.

Berwick upon Tweed.

Decided to go back to the Peak district. Edale is a loverly valley with lots of walks including some onto Kinder Scout, I had planned to go up onto Kinder from Hayfield but as the campsite doesn't have electric hookups, we had quite a drain on the leisure battery so it need a bit of a run to recharge it. I took a little walk onto Nether Tor. Again plenty of reasons for a revisit at some point, but not for a while.

On the way home we called off to see the kids for a couple of days. The little ones are growing up fast and quite getting into the "treasure hunting for little toys". Found a nice little trail of caches along the River Weir, five in total starting at Sunderland Bridge. a village just south of Durham, chose this as they were all fairly close together, the little ones like to do a few but cant walk too far, but at just under 3 miles round trip, they did very well.

Geocache find 700.

Wester Ross & Skye

Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair

Enjoyed a few days solo over on the West coast, at Wester Ross and the Isle of Skye. First stop was Laide, a place I was at a few years ago before moving on to Poolewe. Love this part of Scotland and if your lucky enough to get good weather it can be almost tropical. I did what I found to be quite a challenging walk up through the Coire Dudh Mo to Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair in the Torridon area, not the highest I’d been but so hard on the legs.

Then off to the Isle of Skye, first staying at the Glen Brittle campsite, a bit basic but in one of the most fantastic settings I have ever been in, I shall return. Then too the C&CC site at Loch Greshornish a place we stayed at last year and great for exploring the North of the Island.

The Cuillin Ridge.

I have now done all the geocaches in the Northern half of Skye, which involved several short walks the best just a little way into the Cuillins, next time I will try to go further as they took me to some of the most pretty little places.

Managed to get a bit of sea fishing in as well, not to any degree of success.

One thing I learnt this week, walking poles just seem to transfere blisters from the feet to the hands

Bridges, lichens and some dreams realised.

The Forth Rail Bridge.

Ever since moving up to Aberdeen we have always wanted to stop off at Pettycur Bay campsite to take a closer look at the coastline, but with lots of potential places to visit in the van this little area of Fife (sorry Kingdom of Fife) got pushed down the list till this weekend. It had always looked great, located on the edge of the cliffs overlooking Firth of Forth with views across to Edinburgh. Another place often seen from afar as we crossed either of the Forth bridges and always wanting a visit was North Queensferry,

June 3rd the start of 6 weeks away from work, started a little ominously with a “server outrage” at Geocaching, com not a big drawback as I had most of the area covered by GSAK but I had left some out.

Day 1 was Aberdour and Burntisland, pronounced Burnt Island or Burnis Land depending if you’r posh or not, its definitely not posh, only good if you like all the fun of the fair. Aberdour had the most too offer, lovely part of this coast and a quaint little village. Found 3, DNF 3, bit of a poor show but as someone once said “It’s not about the numbers”.

I have always been taken by the abundance of lichens found in Scotland, not least the bright orange ones found by the sea. Whilst at a beach cache here I came across a small group of professors organising a field trip for 30 lichenologists from the OU. I over heard them discussing the two main types of lichen found, apparently they can be distinguished thus, one is an orangey yellow and the other is yellowy orange.

The following day North Queensferry and Dalgety Bay, too look in awe at the giant marvels of engineering, we had a great time walking around picking up various caches promoting the best viewpoints, also great for watching the world whiz by and chill out, on a hot day. Dalgety Bay functions largely as a dormitory suburb of Edinburgh and seemed a little souless.

Something I learnt this week. The collective noun for a group of professors is a pomposity.

Introduction

For some reason I felt that this may be a good idea, well we are up for most things.

There is nothing Carlotta and I like better than traveling around in our campervan, (ok its a motorhome but that sounds too pretentious) the cat (Felix) comes with us and we geocache as we go, It is our only vehical so I cycle everywhere else, it keeps me fit and I really enjoy it.
I have set this particular page up so I can nurture our, but particularly my, inner geek and to find ourselves within the wider world, this is us having fun. We love nature and the great outdoors and geocaching shows us some of the most interesting and exciting places.
One of our favorite films is Dead men Dont Wear Plaid, hence the geocaching name, but I love the old film noir anyway. And I dont mind a bit of art.