Scottish Summer Sorties

This may look like Emma is about to deliver a fascinating presentation about life as a cutting-edge designer, but it is in fact the high point of her wet weekend, atop Ben Lomond (974m) earlier this afternoon. We saw two huge birds circling the cairn in the mist as we completed our Sunday jaunt. We didn't see much else, what with being in the middle of a cloud. Emma assures me you can see lots of other hills and stuff on a nice day, and sometimes crazy men in vests...


Emma is clearly overjoyed to have rekindled fond childhood memories, I'm clearly concentrating on taking the picture, and Kippen is clearly not keen to be seen. Perhaps she's hiding from the circling birds of prey.

Back to sea level, and here's Emma making friends with a horsey on Saturday beside the beach at Troon. He wasn't very friendly, instead concentrating on his task of advertising tools and timber. Even when the heavens opened after our nice walk on the beach, he didn't budge an inch, or even blink. Mr Horsey gets top marks for dedication to duty in the face of inclement weather and the attention of Emma and the ever-curious Kippen.

So, two rainy dog walks. One by the sea, one up a hill. Here's hoping for many more damp drives home in the glorious Scottish summer of 2007! For those of you whom I haven't met, I'm Michael, and I have the privilege of being Emma's driver, and packed-lunch-carrier.

Silver Boot Ride June 2007

My friend Yvonne and I completed the Silver Boot ride in the first week of June this year. The ride is organised as a competitive team event with rather odd rules. The main rule is that you have to get to a certain place by a certain date and each team is free to work out their own route of whatever length and complexity they wish. We started out with a team of 3 from Spey Bay on the north coast of Moray on 4th June and headed south on the speyside way and then into forestry and hills to get to Aberlour that night. Bill and Rob (Barbara's husband) were crewing for us, i.e. driving the horse trailers with all our stuff to the night's stop. Next day we set out over more forestry roads over Ben Rhinnes and into the estate of Glenfiddich and Glenlivet (think whisky country!) where we passed the old and abandoned Glenfiddich Lodge an old victorian hunting lodge where Queen Victoria used to stay, where we saw huge herds of red deer in the mist - very atmospheric. That day's goal was Tomnavoulin, another distillery town, where we left the horses and had to go to Tomintoul for accomodation for ourselves. We lost one of our team at that point. Barbara had had a riding accident the day before we started and had been gritting her teeth and bearing it, but it got too painful and she had to quit after day 2. She got herself checked out the following Monday at the hospital in Aberdeen and found out that she had 4 broken ribs and a broken shoulder blade! How she managed to ride for 2 days I do not know - she is one tough old bird (69 actually!). Day 3 took us over Cairn Daimh (pronounced Die) and into Tomintoul - a shortish day of only 13 miles and we stayed at the same hotel as the previous night. The horses stayed with a friend who runs a trekking centre in Tomintoul. Day 4 saw us heading due south from Tomintoul down the river Avon and along an old drove road to Inchrory - where an arab sheik has bought the old hunting lodge of Inchrory and done it up as a summer retreat, apparently with gold taps, etc. It is a lovely old house in the middle of nowhere! The track then became a footpath past Loch Builg and over the hill of Culardoch and into Deeside at Braemar, where we stayed the night. The fifth and final day took us through Balmoral Estate, over Lochnagar to Loch Muick and onto another drove road called the Capel Mounth which climbed up and up and then dropped down steeply into Glen Doll and finally to Glen Clova hotel, which was our destination. In all we rode more than 100 miles and climbed over 14,000 feet. There were 11 teams in all and they all finished, the winning team doing 240 miles over 11 days with no crew! I must say I would have hated to do it without our crew (ie Bill and Rob) setting up electric fencing for the horses and bringing our luggage from place to place - a bit like the West Highland Way! I really needed that shower after a long day in the saddle. We enjoyed it so much we are planning our route for 2008, but the venue is on the west coast north of Oban so logistically much more of a challenge!