Another Happy Birthday

A big Happy Birthday to Granny Phyllis!!!!

Hope you enjoy playing with your new camera and printer!

Love from us all xxx

Geograph of the week

This weeks Geograph of the week selection brought another nomination, much to our surprise! James took the photo of Loch Moriag just as we left the car to walk up to Beinn A'Ghlo. Many thanks for the kind comments given!!!

The pictures selected said, "summer is nearly here" and Andrew's photo was a worthy winner. Take a look here

For those of you unfamilar with Geograph, you really should take a look. The aim of the site is to "collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland". They have been up and running for 3 years and the project is really gathering steam now! Our local area has almost all of the grid squares geographed, so we have to travel further afield to bag squares nowadays!

It is a great resource, James and I both use it in the classroom. The Google Earth feed comes in very handy and the recent chage over to the modern O.S. maps has made it a fantastic mapwork tool. Of course it is also just nice to look at the photos, places you have been to, are going to or simply places where you would like to be...

..so go on take a look and get hooked....Geograph

Is summer here?

Could it be that summer has arrived? Well the good weather that accompanied us up to Beinn A'Ghlo on Holiday Monday seems to have stayed with us for most of the past week.

We even attempted another BBQ, although by the time Esmé has got all of her toys arranged for their picnic and BBQ, it had turned so chilly that we headed indoors to eat!

Esmé and I have spent most of the week outdoors, while James has been at school and doing copious amounts of work at home. James was found in the kitchen last night combining ink, water, glitter, vinger, bi-carb, beads and shining things into potions. These were poured into various vessels and covered with his own homemade parchment...very creative and the his P1 kids seemed to love it.

Once more Esmé has developed her seasonal fascination with snails. This happens every summer, so far this year this has been with less destructive effects than the past few years. She is enjoying collecting the snails in pots, naming them, carefully observing them and racing them down the slide.

In past years prodding them til they froth and road rolling them with 'Rolly' from Bob Builder, had been amongst some of her more revolting 'experiments'.

We do need to try to make sure she doesn't take anymore to nursery though...

Triple Whammy!!!!!!

The forecasts for May Day promised fine weather and Esmé had requested to stay over with Granny Phyllis, so we packed her off, then packed our bags!

We set off for Beinn A'Ghlo, out the back of Blair Atholl and parked at Loch Moraig around 9.

Our walking/Geographing weather recently has been poor, as a result we have not had the motivation to do any serious walking. We decided to make up for it, by aiming for lunch on Beinn A'Ghlo, having first walked up 3 Munros!

By mid morning we had met the summit of Carn Laith and Bráigh Coire Chruinn bhalgain was in sight. To our delight there was still snow begging to to be marched through!

After a steep descent we trekking upwards and onwards towards Carn nan Gabhar, on BeinnA'Ghlo and our long awaited lunch.






Just past Beinn A'Ghlo's first cairn the awe inspiring views were temporarily cut short by the vision of a broken walking pole. The route is a popular one and that was the first and last evidence of littering we saw, but it did beg the question, "Why?".

Most hillwalkers walk for 2 reasons, they love the outdoors and the challenge. Why then would someone have such a lack of respect as to leave
their pole lying??? I am sure that there are possible good reasons, it did however look like it had been there for a while, we picked it up and chucked it the bin at home. I just wonder how long it had been there for???

We met plenty of fellow walkers enjoying the hills and views on Monday. On our way down from Carn nan Gabhar, we bumped into the chap who had parked next to us(he was still on his way up, although probably 30 years our senior!). He helpfully suggested that we try descending via the SE of Airgiod Bheinn, a top to the south of Beinn A'Ghlo. James had seen a path as we had set off and this seemed like a nice route to avoid having to scale our first 2 Munros again!

I did look at the map, I am a Geography teacher, I know it looked like the edge of an arete and the contour pattern clearly shows very steep land, with scree. There was however a path, which could be made out with ease at points. We descended what was the steepest, slippiest path covered in a mixture of loose rock and peat. By the time we were two-thirds down, we both feared that our jelly legs may give up at any point!!! A few other walkers followed us, one party turned back and descended by another route and made it to the bottom of Airgiod Bheinn before us(we overtook them, but only by enough for them to catch me having a 'comfort break ~ arghh!).

We had a fabulous day out, the weather was perfect, the views were amazing, the company unparalleled and tea, supplied on our return by Phyllis, with accompanying hugs from Esmé was perfect!!!

We enjoyed ourselves so much that we think managed to miss all the Geographs!!!!!!!!!!

Another happy birthday!!!!!!!!!!

This time to Granny Sheona. No comments about her age though!

Love from all of us xxx

As part of her present from us and Dawn's mob, we forced her into the 21st century and gave her nifty digital photo keyring. Granny Sheona is now the envy of all her friends!!!

Happy Birthday

Our eldest eldest niece is 17 today!!!!

So, a big Happy Birthday to Gemma, I hope you had a great day.

Lots of Love from Auntie Gwen, Uncle James and Esmé xxxxxxxx