Just realised I haven’t blogged about my jaunt up Ben Lomond last year. Well I did but a couple of short paragraphs doesn’t really cover it. It was a crazy day after all.

It started with the seven of us planning the trip and gradually realising the weather was going to possibly scupper all our plans. Alex ended up pulling out due to a case of the lurgy and one of Willie’s mates gave up as well. In all honesty we possibly should have as well with hind sight.

I guess the first sign that the day wasn’t going to go we the way we planned appeared when we started driving up the east bank of Loch Lomond. Forget the rain we encountered on the way up there. It was definitely the fallen trees on the road that gave the biggest hint.

The rain held off as we got our gear together but thanks to a few errors in the layout of the roads and land *cough* I couldn’t read my map */cough* it took us five minutes which included a walk up a forest road that went nowhere near the summit before we realised we had to head back to the car park to find the real path.

The initial going was good. The weather was a bit crap though. One minute it rained the next it stopped but the wind just didn’t let up. We would get completely soaked by the rain and then by the time it stopped and started again we would have been blown dry. As we started to reach about a third of the way up we really started to struggle with the wind. It gets a little steep at this point and as the hillside is completely exposed once you get pass the tree line at the beginning it started to take it’s toll. Mark decided he just couldn’t go any further. I don’t know if it was the wind or just his body telling him that despite the energy drinks he was stupid to go any further but he was the first to head back and with hindsight I think that’s when we all should have turned back.

The wind didn’t let up at all throughout the climb and in fact just got worse. I read the weather reports when we got back and for most of the climb the wind was gusting at up to 50 miles per hour. Dave and Stoo were determined to at least make it to the half way point which to there credit they did. There is a well about halfway up on the map which they made it passed before they turned back. I don’t know why but I stood for a few minutes shouting to Dave to make sure he knew what to do if something was to happen to them on the way down. I guess it was because although we all had radios with us the mobile phone reception up there is sporadic at best and almost all the survival and first aid gear was either in my own bag or Willie’s ruck sack.

So we pressed on. At times the wind would just hit us constantly for a few minutes and we’d just stand there leaning into it hoping for it to let up long enough for us to walk another couple of hundred yards before the next gust. It was round about this point that we started to meet a few other climbers as they caught up with us. We’d only seen one other person on the hill up until then and he had shot ahead with his dog and you could see his outline as he made a break for the summit. They all seemed nuts if truth be told. We stopped for a quick rest just as it starts to get really steep and rocky just before you turn back around and start the last leg up to the summit. Willie stopped for a breather and I carried on to see how far I could get before I stopped for a bite to eat to let him catch up.

That’s when I bumped into they guy with the dog again. He was on his way back down after reaching the summit and said it was insane up there. As I found out later it was gusting at up to 90 miles an hour up there. He waited until the wind died down before running between rocks and then holding on until the wind died down again. He almost lost his dog three times thanks to the wind apparently. I pushed on and got to within what I thought at the time was about 400 yards from the summit but after looking again at the map it was probably twice that I turned back. It was just stupid to carry on. I took my last picture looking out over the lochs behind the mountain and the camera’s battery died. It’s was definitely a sign.

It turned out Willie had actually decided just to wait where he had stopped hoping that I’d turn back as well. I eventually made it back down to him and just like when I climbed Ben Nevis there was a spring in my step on the way back down. Where we struggled to walk up the damn hill we were almost running down the thing. The worst bit was still to come however.

When we reached the bottom we found out that the hotel was without power. A tree had been blown over and took out both the power and phone lines. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem except all the way back down the hill all we could think about was a nice warm meal and a pint of beer. The kitchen was shut and the beer pumps wouldn’t work without power. We were stuck with warm bottled beer or cans of soft drinks and a scone.

We will be back to do it again when the weather gets better and there are plans afoot to hit The Cobbler in March in preparation. Fingers crossed the weather works out for us next time!

Tags: Ben Lomond, Dave Hogg, hills, Mark, outdoors, rain, Scotland, Stoo, walking, weather, Willie, wind

Obviously I’m not going to get all 101 things written down in one go so it will be added to as I come up with things. As things get ticked off there will be an entry to justify its completion

Start:- 1 March 07
End:- 26 November 09

1. Go on a holiday with my family
2. Go on a holiday abroad with my family
3. Go on 10 dates with Vonnie without the kids [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
4. Visit 2 countries I’ve never been to before [ ] [ ]
5. Pass my driving test
6. Make a home cooked meal from scratch for an entire week
7. Decorate the living room
8. Decorate the bedrooms
9. Fit a new kitchen
10. Get a promotion at work
11. Try and brew my own beer
12. Get my weight down to 16 Stone
13. Get a savings account going for the kids
14. Get a savings account going for Vonnie and myself
15. Dig up the bushes/trees in the back garden
16. Demolish the coalshed
17. Sort out the garden
18. Paint a W40k minature
19. Finish painting my Imperial Guard miniatures
20. Take a photo a day for a year, no matter how good, for the photoblog.
21. Get my wrist tattoo
22. Build, cultivate and harvest my own vegetable plot
23. Attend 5 games of airsoft [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
24. Go on 3 camping trips with my family[ ] [ ] [ ]
25. Go on 2 camping trips with my mates[ ] [ ]
26. Climb a munro
27. Climb Ben Lomond
28. Climb Ben Nevis
29. Walk the West Highland Way
30. Learn how to be a half way decent photographer
31. Teach Nairn to ride a bike without stabilisers
32. Do 5 county walks of at least 5 miles [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
33. Do 3 country walks of at least 10 miles [ ] [ ] [ ]
34. Try 30 new meals [x] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ], 10 [ ], 20 [ ], 30 [ ]
35. Grow my own jalepenos
36. Organise and finish flooring the loft space
37. See the guys for a day/night out/in at least once a month for a year [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [
38. Host a BBQ each year [ ] [ ] [ ]
39. Have a house warming party
40. Blog every day for a month at least 5 times [x] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
41. Decorate bathroom
42. Floor Bathroom
43. Floor Kitchen
44. Plant cherry tree
45. Make a fruit crumble from fruit grown in my back garden
46. Make a curry from scratch

Tags: Ben Lomond, Ben Nevis

thought id put up a couple of my favourites

Maelcom’s frown deepened. ‘You listen, Babylon mon,’ he said. ‘I a warrior. But this no m’ fight, no Zion fight. Babylon fightin’ Babylon, eatin i’self, ya know? But Jah seh I an’ I t’ bring Steppin Razor outa this.’
Case Blinked
‘She a warrior,’ Maelcom said, as of it explained everything. ‘Now you tell me, mon, who I not t’ kill.’

What is with this weather? I think its probably stopped raining about twice since the thunderstorm the other night. Its just a continual downpour.

Usually I dont mind the rain…as Billy Connelly says “Theres no such thing as bad weather. Just the wrong kind of clothes.” I used to like walking home from work when I worked for Safeway in the pissing rain at 11pm or walking there to start a shift at 5-6am. Noone was about and all you could hear was the rain hitting the pavement or the leaves in the trees above. I really liked it in the morning…usually more so when I’d finished a nightshift…as when you left the store it would be pitch black and you could only see the rain in the car park lights but by the time you got home the sun had risen and even though you couldnt see it through the clouds it lit everything up. I loved staring up into the rain almost as much as staring up into a snow storm.

I do mind this kind of rain though simply becuase it is never ending. From the windows at work you can see Ben Lomond on a good day and right over the moors out towards Eaglesham and beyond. These days you can barely see beyond the end of the road. Its claustraphobic. I know the rest of the worlds out there but I’ll be buggered if I can see it!

“I think we broke Stoo”

My name got called and I looked up…the dentist was hot! Why she didnt have her own practice etc I’ll never know. Anyway she sat me down in a room that had no door with the sun blaring in my eyes and asked me a few more questions then pulled on the latex gloves and had a gander in my gub. It turns out it was nothing to do with the fillings I lost but rather a filling that was lose and the rot had got under it. I had two choices…extraction or root canal treatment and she didnt think there would be enough tooth left to rebuild if we went for the second option. “Fair enough” I thought.

She said if I was going for the extraction she’d see if a room and a student were free if not I’d have to come back in the afternoon. Thankfully there was…but as soon as she said student my heart stopped. I had my share of students try and get a tooth out my head before in this place without any luck until one guy climbed on my chest to get enough leverage. Anyway…along comes this young 20-ish attractive blonde student dentist. She was the size of a pea and couldnt get the tooth to budge…so the real dentist had a go…no dice. The next thing I know shes saying shes going to loosen the tooth up a bit and have another go and that I’s mabe feel a bit of pressure on my good teeth. Thirty minutes later the tooth comes out and everyone is relieved and then I look around the room.

In a normal dentists room when they work they have their tray of instruments which get quickly whisked away to be cleaned before you really get a chance to see them. My head turned and seen the tray…there was the wee mirror and pick thing…the foreceps with my tooth still gripped in them…and about 6 screwdrivery type things that I later found out to be what the dentist used to loosen my tooth off. Oh and blood everywhere on them…looked like a butchers.

She then buggered off to leave me making small talk witht he student who kept apologising for catching my lip between my front teeth and the foreceps. She seemed a bit more at ease when I said she could have hit me in the face witha hammer to get the tooth out and I’d still ahve thanked her. Anyway she went and got another dentist to check the hole in my gum and she brought back another stunningly attractive female dentist, this time a brunette. She said I was bleeding quite heavily and to give it another 5 minutes. After that time passed the student went and got another dentist to do a final check only for it to be a guy this time (honestly the only guy I seen there all day apart from the security guard on the front door) and I managed to bite his finger when he was putting a new bit of gauze in my mouth. that’ll teach him for not being a hot female dentist.

I need to stop this…I’m starting to sound like Fez reciting one of his fantasies!

“So what are you going to do?”
“Shoot him.”
“What?”
“It’s the principle, James.”
“With a pellet gun? What are you going to accomplish with that?”
“It allows me to seriously aggravate a situation without changing the course of history. It also stings like a bitch.”

“There’s two different types of pain. Pain and man pain.”
“What’s man pain?”
“Man pain is when you do something stupid.”

“You know, Norm, you’ve been coming in here a long time.”

Tags: Ben Lomond, Billy Connolly, car park lights, Safeway