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

So our final day in Brighton arrived. We ate our weight in breakfast and then checked out of the hotel. We never really seen much of Brighton on the day before so we decided to let Vonnie wander around the shops for a couple of hours before heading to the car.

When I’d been out the night before the place looked like Glasgow’s east end with a few more shiny shops and a bunch of housing that wouldn’t look out of place in St Andrews behind the shops. Nothing spectacular really. As we walked up towards the main shopping area though we walked down into a side street full of shops. And it went on…and on…and on. The city centre is full of little alleyways full of boutiques, jewelers, toy shops and anything else you could possibly ever find or want to find. It was what I felt a seaside town should be like. Vonnie fell in love with a cake shop that sold the most amazing looking cupcakes whilst the kids found a toyshop that they could spend their entire pocket money from now until they day they turn 18 and still not have bought everything they wanted.

It was around about this time though that I realised there was a LEGO shop in Brighton. A young kid going into the toyshop had a LEGO carrier bag and was obviously out with his gran who was spoiling him. A quick look on the internet on my phone and shuffle around Google Maps meant that I had a plan to get us to the shop. All I had to do was ask if anyone minded that we go to the LEGO shop though. It was heaving. Trying to navigate in there with the pram was almost impossible so Findlay bought himself a Racer and the kids picked up a minifig from the pick’n'mix section whilst Vonnie bought me a teeshirt as a present.

Outside was the worst busker I’ve every had the misfortune to hear. A young emo/grunger/rock kid dressed in neon clothes playing bad music on a ukulele hooked up to a crappy amp. I probably wouldn’t have minded so much if he wasn’t trying to flog CD’s of his music as well.

Once we found the car park again we set off looking for a petrol station. Unlike the day before when we drove west we decided to drive east instead and see if we could find anything nice to see or do. I thought we were just going on a drive before collecting our bags from the hotel and Vonnie had forgotten about the bags and thought we were already on our way. After a bit of discussion about who’s fault it was we ended up back at the hotel, which was on the way to the motorway anyway, the receptionist asked in disbelief about what was in the bags we’d left. The holdalls were fine but the laptop she couldn’t believe the weight of. I think it had both laptops and chargers as well as by books and all my camera lenses in it. Not the lightest of things.

I can’t remember at what point we decided just to drive home rather than stop off at Derby, it might have been around the junction on the M25 for Heathrow, but that’s what we did. We eventually found a service station that had an M&S Simply Foods store in it as it’s far cheaper than most service stations and the grubs better as well. I think we bought them out of sweets and sandwiches. And then we found the Krispy Kreme chiller in the next shop. We’d loved the glazed ring donuts in London so we bought a dozen mixed donuts and really pigged out. They are very disappointing though. Certainly far more hyped than they have any need to be.

We had to stop for diesel before Manchester and so came off the motorway looking for a cheaper alternative to the service stations. The last time we did this we ended up driving around Kendal on the way to France last year and getting lost. We did that again this time as well. One wrong turning on a roundabout, I’m sure the road layout had changed from when our map was printed, and we were completely lost. It took a good 45 minutes of driving to find our was to Crewe, the most depressing town on Planet Earth, fill up the tank and get back onto the motorway at a junction we’d passed over an hour previously. That was a little stress inducing.

Eventually we made it back across the border but the weather was horrendous. I’ve no idea what time we got home at but at points the drive was terrifying. The trucks and artics were kicking up that much spray that you couldn’t sit behind them on the road as you could barely see but if you tried to overtake you went from being able to see 10-15m to barely being able to see past the front bumper of your car for those few seconds. We did get home in one piece though.

So…I know I write these holiday blogs or myself as I usually forget everything but it seems some people actually read them. Well done you guys. You might want to get your sanity checked next time your at the doctors though…

Tags: Brighton, Crewe, driving, Krispy Kreme, shops, weather

Our plans were to leave on Friday the 17th straight from work and camp on our way down to London. We weren’t due in London until Saturday the 24th for Zara’s wedding so we had a lot of time to use up and had many plans involving the National Transport Museum and all the viking stuff around York as well as popping in and see family.

And then the rain started. It wasn’t just your normal rain either that would come and go and if you were unlucky be really heavy for an hour or so. This was the kind that started heavy and didn’t stop being heavy. I phoned a couple of campsites to find out how busy they were and most said they were fully booked but with the weather they didn’t expect many to actually turn up so they felt quite confident that if we turned up on the day we should be able to get a space. We started ticking the days off as the rain continued and eventually we arrived at Wednesday before the wedding. We had no choice. We had to travel down the next day or we wouldn’t get there in any fit state and besides we had already planned on being in London on the Friday and had booked a hotel for the night as well as for after the wedding.

So we packed. And looked out things we would need. And went to the shops and bought the things we forgot to get when we were supposed to buy everything the previous week. And then it was Thursday morning. As time went on the rain didn’t stop, the car didn’t finish getting packed, the house barely got any cleaner and we were struggling to find somewhere that we could be guaranteed to get a pitch at. People got stressed and eventually the decision was made to drive through the night. Kat was housing sitting for us and actually arrived after work before we had left the house.

Still packing at lunchtime on Thursday

Eventually we left and I thought that it might actually be plain sailing all the way down. We’d learned a few lessons on the France trip last year and we’d miss the ‘rush hour’ with leaving so late. Five minutes after leaving the house we came off the Whirlies roundabout on to the Hamilton Expressway only to arrive in a tailback as the had closed the east bound carriageway and were diverting two busy lanes of 70 mph traffic down single lane roads through Blantyre and then Hamilton. The way the diversion was going it was going to be like that all the way to Strathclyde Park. It took us an hour to travel maybe 500m to get to a point where we could turn around and head back past past Allers and down through Cambuslang to get on to the motorway at Carmyle.

We were on our way.

Tags: 2009, camping, delay, holiday, London, rain, Someone up there doesnt like us, traffic, weather