I woke up at 6:30am and ran (well jumped) across the cabin to open the window blind. I was rather expecting to see some Alps, but in fact there was some rather unremarkable French countryside. At this point it began to dawn on me that part of the reason that I had slept so well […]
The way the Orient Express works now is that you leave from Victoria Station, but the train you board is actually the Belmond Pullman, which takes you through to Folkestone. From there you have to transfer to a coach to go through the Eurotunnel, after which you join the Orient Express proper in Calais. The […]
I’m down visiting my parents at the moment and had a lovely experience today. One of my mum’s friends has rescued five baby hedgehogs. She found them wandering in her garden in the daytime, disoriented and half-starved with no sign of their mother (who was probably killed on the road). They were immediately taken in […]
MWIS (the mountain weather service) had today down as clear and cold with an 80% chance of clear Munro tops… On that basis we set out to climb Ben Vane. R and I have hypothesised in the past that at the end of each calendar year we could make MWIS a donation of £5 for […]
We went for a walk just after dawn today (having to get up a bit later this week as it is still dark at 7am). The views on the way back down towards the mountains were magnificent. Beinn Lochain under a hat of cloud Beinn Bheula sporting the same style The loch comes into view Amazing […]
We had a lovely day at V’s wedding. It was actually in her and her partner’s (I can say husband now!) new home which made it a lot more intimate than the registrar’s office where R and I had ours. Below is Bella the springer spaniel who is super cute and carries a soft toy […]
I was just about to go to bed last night when I glanced outside the window to see a large pine marten munching on the nuts we had put out for the night time visitors. Unlike the badgers who are pretty phlegmatic about human presence, he was very wary and constantly glancing about. R took […]
This was honestly not deliberate – but after I had made these olive rolls and added a central black olive as a decoration, it did occur to me that they bear more than a passing resemblance to comedy boobs. I’m sure they’ll taste none the worse for that… R’s sister V is getting married tomorrow […]
As it was a beautiful morning, I nipped up the Brack. Actually it was rather further than I remembered it being and I am a bit footsore tonight. The views on the way up and from the top were glorious though. Here is the cairn at the summit just to prove I made it. And […]
I had the bright idea of moving the nuts closer in to take advantage of the new high resolution camera (this after weeks of agonising over how to move the camera – doh!). To attract the animals to the new location, I made a trail of nuts from the bird feeding area where they are […]
