Substitute

On the banks of Loch Ness

Since the campsite at Cullen on the Moray coast went over to the dark side ( statics only ), we have been looking for a substitute, we loved that site. We found Banff links, right on the beach with a fish and chip shop close to and  a do able dash on a Friday evening after work from Aberdeen.

October break took us to The Lake district, weather was terrible, raining most of the time, but I did manage a good walk out of the C&CC site at Keswick onto Skiddaw.

Once the dark nights came in and the fact that most sites close after the October hols, we moved our weekend get away to Stonehaven, the new Caravan Club site there is very good. Its a plan for next year to hopefully see the fireballs celebration there next year.

Christmas break was at another new site at Loch Ness, again very wet weather kept us in doors a lot of the time, but good views of the Loch. A very scary drive home in extremely wind conditions.
A few days at home over Christmas itself  before taking off for the New year on Teesside.

Lower Falls of Foyers, nr Loch Ness

New year on Teesside a bit of geocaching with the kids, before returning home, again calling in at Mortonhall to break the journey up. Had the opportunity to go into Edinburgh and partake in the last few days of the festivities, as well as having a bit of fun on a ghost tour.

We went on the big wheel.

That's it 2013, I have had trouble keeping up to date with this blog so to try help I thought I would make a travel journal for 2014.

Collaged Travel journal.

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.

Easter Fortnight.

Valley of Rocks.

In an attempt to gain better weather for our Easter break we decided to go South, Devon or Cornwall was on the cards for a possible summer trip but we changed our plans pulling it forward, so off to North Devon. We even managed to squeeze an extra day into our plan and took the opportunity to drop in Morton Hall again on the way down, got in a few local geocaches before retiring to the Stable bar for one of there loverly meals. 

Maybe it will be the last visit here, on reading the booking confirmation email, a little later once booked in, I saw they had wanted to charge £3 for Felix the cat who travels with us, can not understand why as he takes no advantage of any of the facilities on the campsite and bring his own cat litter. 

After sleeping later than intended we set off for Hayfield,a long drive, a sneaky little multi-cache right outside the campsite satisfied us for that day and off to The Sportsman, an inn serving very good food, fine ales and our friend Tom works there. 
North Devon was our next stop for a whole week stopping at 

Umberliegh, weather wasn't the best but not the snow they had back in Scotland. Explored a little of Exmoor, Exeter, along with an interesting area called Valley of Rocks and a village called West Down where someone has laid 105 geocaches along the west down way. Needless to say we didn't attempt to go for them all, but did manage 21 a record for us for one day. 
Heading back up North we called in at Formby nr Liverpool, stopped on a friends drive and visited the beach, there we did an earthcache where we had to find some prehistoric mudflats at low tide, this ephemeral  fossil had the foot prints of ancient people and animals. Final stop off on the way home was Moffat, meeting up with the kids, who were once more staying at St Marys loch. We all went for a walk up the Grey Mares Tail falls to Loch Skeen, once there I decided to leave the group and go on to a high terrain geocache, avoiding yet more snow however the uplands of Scotland are arctic. We also found the cache that we had looked for exactly one year earlier and quite easily, as is often said by all in the geocaching game, sure I'd looked there before.
From now on I must try to write posts for the blog more timely.