Highland Coo!!

Today we made gingerbread houses. Here they only make gingerbread people. We had enough dough to make 2 houses, one for us and one for Nevisport.

Last week we took a trip to Inverness, which is about 2hrs northeast of here. It is called the "capital of the Highlands." We found a pub that was hosting a ceileidh(pronounced kaelea) in the lower level and a reggae night upstairs. Then we went to another pub that had a traditional 3 piece band, drums, guitar, and pipes. Heather ended up singing some Canadian music at the end of the night. From there we went to see the Culloden Battlefield, where a lot of people died in under an hour. For more info use your technological skills and look it up. We then went to the Clava Cairns. They are ancient burial chambers (3 or 4 thousand years old) that are all built to line up with the sunset at winter solstice. We had great timing as we were there at sunset and we're close enough to the winter solstice so it looked great.

Everyone's Christmas presents have been posted!!!
Looking forward to Christmas, we are going to spend it with some new friends of ours who took over a local hostel as managers when Simon and Tash went home.

I'm Flying!!!

So yesterday Heather and I went on a hike to The Lost Valley of Glencoe. It was pretty cool, except for the rain. Nice couple hours hiking up trails and down rock faces. Really nice place, it is where the MacDonald's hid their cows so other clans couldn't steal or kill them.

Also lots of you have been asking for pictures of our flat/car.

I was able to go climbing a couple of days ago, lots of fun also. And of course it started raining, so we had to cut it short. We only got one climb in.

Just trying to send some faxes today but they arnt that easy to do. No places has an international fax. I dont understand, from home you just type in the number and hit send, here there are different types of phone lines apparently. Some only call land lines, some will call land and mobile numbers and some are for national fax. Still havn't found an international fax. I will just have to keep trying.

That's all for now. Hope you are all well and enjoying yourselves.

Dan

More cold drinks!

Saturday was a trip to Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. Very cool.
Big news is that we are buying a car! Thursday it is getting some work done but we might even be driving it by the weekend!
Here is a link to some more photos. YES it is a facebook page, but you DO NOT NEED a facebook login to view this site.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2204544&l=166d2&id=121506517

You're a what?

A ski and snowboard instructor.
Starting on Dec 20th this will be my title. I will be working at Nevis Range. Sounds like lots of fun, and they do a lot of their own high angle rescues instead of bringing in the mountain rescue team, so I will be envolved with that as well.

Finally have a job though. Took long enough.

Here is their website.
http://www.nevisrange.co.uk/winter/

And we booked a vacation to San Agustin Grand Canaria, for January.


Yay fun. things are looking better.

If you're in trouble you don't let a helicopter fly over three times before lighting a flare

So about two weeks ago Heather and I were hiking in Glen Nevis and happened across the Nevis Mountain Rescue team doing a training exercise. It was pretty cool. Here is the video.

Let go of my face!

Hi all!
Just an update from Fort William.
Halloween weekend we were in Glasgow and had a great time exploring, seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company perform Romeo and Juliette, rock climbing and shopping.
It has turned back to typical Fort William weather (cold, windy and rainy) after a few weeks of nice weather.
This morning we were at the rememberance day ceremony in town at the memorial. The pipe and drum band was from the local high school and most of them were girls! There were two buglers from the military music academy (cant remember exactly what its called). They play a different reveille than we do, and I don't envy them, theirs is much harder!! All slurring up after 2 minutes of silence in the cold and rain. Nice ceremony though.
Work is slow, although with the rain back it should pick up again. Looking forward to next weekend, Arwen is visiting!

This is what we call "Burn Bashing"!!!

This was supposed to be put up last weekend. It got lost in cyberspace. Its here now though.

So here in Scotland there are millions of different words for different types of waterways. One of which is called a burn. Usually really small lots of water when it rains and none when it doesn't. These burns are usually between 5ft and 15 ft wide often have quite a steep set of drops and steep banks. They also don't have many eddies(safe places to stop on the side.)

Over the last week or so I have met about 6-8 local kayakers and due to their hospitality I have been able to go on 4 different rivers so far, and hopefully more. On Friday I ran the Spean Gorge which is about a 15 minute drive from Fort William. Saturday I ran the River Orchy and sat in the car while two of the guys ran the Etive River. It was just a bit too big for me at that point. Today I ran some little burn. As far as I know there is no name for it. But it was pretty cool. There are soooo many little rivers (1-2 hrs long) within about an hours drive from here.

The Burn we did today was real creeking style kayaking. Very fast water, really pushy, lots of overhanging trees and lots of short steep drops. Needless to say I walked about half of it. Unfortunately two of the guys I was with broke their boats. Dom on the last river he was on, and Chris on the river today. Big cracks in the hull, lets lots of water in and makes for a bad day all around. I was lucky and didn't break my borrowed one. I didn't lose it either when I took an unexpected 7 ft slope in the river and swam. There was about a 30 second surf in a very grabby retentive hole. Lots of fun and really got the adrenaline going.
All in all the day was, for me anyways, a great day. Even after the short swim I was still nice and warm as well as having lots of fun. I hope to get out more and possibly get a used boat at some point.

This is the third step of the first rapid (triple step) on the River Etive. Watch with sound, listen closely at the end.

That's all for now.

Slideshow - Old Inverlochy Castle

Photos

Exploring some more of the old fort.

Hint: clicking on pictures will open them, bigger, in another window.

Steam Train (Hogwarts Express!) Harry Potter Bridge Walking up Cow Hill
We were here!
The Ben (Ben Nevis) - NOT in the clouds!

Above: views of Fort William (near side of the loch)

Random old wall.Pretty Trees.

Glen Nevis

Random old cemetery

"Tender, juicy, moist, and delicious... Gordon Ramsey would approve."

Thanks, Ali, for the review of the turkey!

So thanksgiving in Scotland was a HUGE success if we may say. It was a very international event. Scottish representatives were Kaye, Ali, and Keith from work at Nevisport. Simon (from work) and Tash are from New Zealand and were also experiencing their first thanksgiving. Kaye wins for being the most enthusiastic. I think the whole town of Fort William knows that Kaye came to thanksgiving tonight. And if they don't know yet, I'm sure they'll hear about it tomorrow. Unfortunately Arwen and I have different work schedules, and today is not a holiday here... so Arwen was unable to join us.

Menu:

Roast turkey with gravy made from the drippings/stock that we cooked.

Mashed potatoes

Roasted potatoes, mixed regular and sweet but mostly sweet.

Green beans, steamed broccoli (thanks Simon & Tash)

Butternut squash

Home made cranberry sauce

AND

Home made pumpkin pie.

Oh, the pie. Real pumpkin pie. As in it started from a pumpkin, not a can. We baked the first pie last night and it was pretty interesting because we managed to get two sets of recipes that both lacked actual baking instructions (such as what temperature or how to long to bake it). We were also unable to connect to the internet at the time, so there were no online recipes to help. However we just watched it very carefully and it all worked out. There was a little bit of challenge when I somehow managed, unbeknownst to me, to create a complex equation of gravity, counterweight and levers which resulted in a half-baked pie crust splat on the floor upside down. The real challenge came trying to use the reverse equation to get the pie back on the counter. Turns out gravity doesn't work in reverse. Anyways, we got it back an fit it back together and it all worked out.

Pumpkin pie was a brand new experience to all guests at dinner. They really had no idea what to expect from a pie made from a halloween decoration. Tash was expecting it to be some sort of vegetable pie (instead of a meat pie, but cooked the same way) and Kaye was certain she wasn't going to like it. Everyone tried at least a small piece with some whipped cream, the only item of the evening not home made. We probably could have made the cream ourselves, but since the best tool we had for the job was a whisk and an arm, we decided we could come up with a few more productive ways to spend an hour (5 hour turkey).

The turkey was made with much love (basting every 20 minutes or so after the first hour) but it was well worth it. Ali's review was that it was "tender, juicy, moist, and delicious... Gordon Ramsey would approve." I agree. It was good. 'nuff said. Even Kaye liked it, despite her previous experiences with un-tasty turkey.

Butternut squash was great and I don't even like squash. Kaye was, again, convinced that she wouldn't like it, but of course she did (and commented on how good it was). One of the biggest hits on the menu but definetly the easiest to make!

Stuffing - yay, it worked! Also good. Some people mush it up in a blender, no wonder they think its gross.

We had a great time around the table. We ended up with 7 for dinner and it worked perfectly as we only have 7 plates. We were giving some new wine glasses for the flat as a gift which was nice. Overall, success. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! We have lots of be thankful for, we are absoulely loving Scotland.

Well it could be...

Yay free wireless at work. Yay lunch break!

Ok so here is the big news - we have a flat! Yay! Its way up the hill but so is everything in Fort William. It is a tourist flat in the summer so the walls are pink but I like it anyways. Our landlord is really nice and picked us up from the hostel when we moved so that we wouldn't have to walk with all our stuff or pay for a taxi. Email/leave a comment if you want us to send our address.

Pictures will go up soon.

Sunday we went for a walk up a mountain/hill/place of higher altitude called Cow Hill which overlooks the town and the loch and the glen. But we should have picked that day to go up the ben (ben nevis) because its in the clouds like 355 days a year and this day it wasn't! But you need to plan a day to climb the ben, you can't really just go. So we enjoyed our walk anyways. Pictures of this also to follow.

Thanksgiving is coming up! Only things we still need are a meat thermometer and oh ya, a turkey.

Dear Mom,

If you are a mom, please do not sign your comments as "mom."

We do not know who you are.

Love,
Heather & Dan

How's it gong?

So today was an adventure!

First I went to church and was the only person other than the baptism family who didn't have grey or white hair. So we'll see how that goes.Then Dan & I headed to Glencoe to do some hiking. We didn't make it to our original destination but we found a geocache and other cool things instead. So a note on Highland towns: they are named some combination of Glen, Inver, Nevis, Loch, Coe, and Kin. Like Glencoe, Inverlochy, Invercoe, Kinlocheil, or Inverroy.

We got off the bus in Glencoe and decided to look for a geocache since it was nearby. Since we don't know the trails in the area yet, we just took the first footpath that we found going in the right direction. We hiked through a beautiful forest, and up a hill covered in heather and then back down the hill into the forest again... only to find a really simple, flat, footpath that led straight to the cache. However, it was well worth the amazing views we had from the hike. We were very happy to enjoy SUNSHINE on the hills, even though it rained a few times.

After that we decided to walk to some town that we can't pronounce, Ballachulsh, because that's where the tourist information centre is. We were trying to find the trail to a place we had read about on the internet called the lost valley. The walk ended up being quite long and the tourist info centre was just brochures and gifts, no helpful people like in Fort William. There turned out to be an old, abandonded slate quarry right across the road from the centre. It was really fun to explore, there were millions of little pieces of slate everywhere and some massive rocks that had fallen from the cliffs. When we were done exploring the quarry we took an earlier bus home as we were getting hungry and it started to get cold.

Tomorrow is my first day of work - yay.

Oh, we went to the local pubs friday. We found this crazy downstairs place thats at the original historical street level, and there was this crazy door that is heather-sized.

But, grip, neck, shaft, throat, blade, tip....

Yeah, the paddle song got me a job!

Well, at the interview they asked about teaching canoeing and kayaking to kids. So I said I usually take them knee deep out in the water to practice strokes and sing the paddle song. And at the end of the interview, they told me that I am the right person for the job, and that they especially like the singing!

I am working here, at Nevisport in Fort William.

*Random Applause*

This is the Scotland I've been waiting for!!!

We haven't been in Fort William very long, but its a great place so far. The main street is just full of outdoors shops, and the hostel is full of Canadians! And lots of other awesome people. Tonight we introduced the other hostel-stayers to the joys of s'mores. And someone had a guitar so we sang songs and laughed and basically had a good time.

Our hostel overlooks the lake, with some mountains beyond it. Behind us is Ben Nevis, the tallest peak in the UK. Some Australians here climbed it today - we will definetly be making it to the top while we are here.

Tomorrow I have my first job interview for a company called Nevisport, an outdoors store. We are also looking in to working at a hotel where we would also be provided with accomodations.

Anyways its bed time, we want to get up early tomorrow so we can do some exploring!

The photos of the four elements are laid in the road at the end of the pedestrian mall in the town.