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.