To Spain and Back

Hanging about, waiting for something to point a camera at

All has been quiet on the blogging front from me and Dave for a while as I handed the reins of Velvet Antlers over and I followed Dave out to Spain to film him on a climbing trip. Not so long ago, we bought an all-singing-all-dancing camera to make our own climbing film with. Things got off to a stonking start as the very first thing I filmed him doing was soloing an 8c. As far as we are aware, this is the first time an 8c has been soloed.

Soloing Darwin Dixit 8c

About 10 years ago, Dave had a fall when he was soloing an E8 on gritstone when a pebble snapped; the result of which was a broken ankle and a promise to me that he would never solo another route again. Until one day he asked if he could solo an 8b. Surprisingly for him and probably more surprising to me, I agreed. He must have caught me in a really good mood - he soloed Hurly Burly at Dunkeld before I could change my mind. He never specifically asked me if he could solo this 8c, Darwin Dixit at Laboratori, it has just been rumbling away in the background for some time now as good training for a trad route on Ben Nevis that he has his eye on, where he would need to know that he could do 8c climbing on an exposed, unprotected trad route.

Soloing Darwin Dixit 8c

Watching him solo this, I was surprisingly unemotional about it. Maybe it was because I was detached from what was going on as I was watching it on a screen. Probably, there was a bit of that and a bit of my (usually) unwavering confidence in him – if he tells me that he thinks he can do this, then I have to believe him. He’s been right so far, after all.

Soloing Darwin Dixit 8c

Ready to jug

Getting the camera angles for film and still shots was an experience in itself. I’ve seen the Hot Aches guys and crew from To Hell and Back jugging up ropes but studiously avoided partaking myself until now, resulting in a strained ab. One definitely needs to do more stomach crunches before bedtime. Whilst we were out in Spain, they were experiencing unseasonably cold weather and really high winds, so even once I had jugged up the ropes, a strong wind was constantly waving me back and forth despite plenty of anchor ropes making filming that little bit more difficult. I’ve done photo shoots before on the rope but usually abbed in and this time I had to spend a lot longer than usual up there and for someone that is not terribly at home dangling at great height, I’d better get used to it quickly as there is plenty more of that ahead of me.

Dave climbing Los Ultimo Vampiros Hippies 8c, Margalef

Ben Nevis from the air

I cannot begin to describe just how awesome today was. Seriously. It all started last night when Dave Brown happened to mention that Diff, his partner in Hot Aches Productions, was coming up to Fort William in the morning to do some shooting for a new film Triple Echo are making about Ben Nevis. They needed aerial shots of the Ben; the weather was perfect and the helicopter was booked. I got to thinking…

So at half 8 this morning, I phoned Triple Echo and asked if there was any chance of a lift. It was a long shot but it worked! If I could be at the Nevis Range car park in half an hour, they’d see if they could squeeze me in – woohoo! Sheepishly blagging some wood (see post below) was nothing compared to blagging your way into a free ride round Ben Nevis in a helicopter on one of the best days of the year for it.

Click on the pictures below for a larger image.

All of the pictures I took in the air were shot through the helicopter window, so there are some reflections. But they still give you an impression of how awesome Ben Nevis is!

The shapely ridge of Carn Mor Dearg

A stop for lunch

An unusual view of the summit plateau of Ben Nevis. It looks so innocuous in sunshine, but can be a very scary place to be in a winter storm. You can see the summit observatory ruins clearly.

1st time ice climber

Forgive the rather unflattering 'bum-shot' but I'm sure every ice-climber has some lurking in a folder somewhere.

Dave and I have some filming planned soon on Ben Nevis and never having touched ice with an axe before, we thought it would be a good idea to hit the Ice Factor and try swinging some tools for the first time before I hit the real stuff, as the weather outside is minging. That was two nights ago now and my forearms are still stiff from the savage pump.

Amazing fun though!

I'm sure all you proper ice climbers are getting psyched for the next couple of days as it looks like there are some pretty good conditions on the horizon.

Stuff we chose for our hampers part 4 – Gillies Clootie

It’s really no wonder people get so worked up about planning their weddings. It really is quite important for things to be just right. A wedding is your chance to tell most of the people you know something about yourself and your style.

The style we wanted for our wedding was ‘Scottish’, ‘chilled’ and ‘informal’. We reckon we hit the right note and so we still look back and think it was a great day and we were very comfortable. You know I think that in an ideal wedding people should really feel at home. Sometimes big gatherings get so formal and I think that limits the fun a little bit (sure, or course some alcohol later on helps make this dissolve, if not swing quite the other way!). But if you choose all the details for your wedding accordingly, I think it’s possible to side step this issue and put everyone at ease and in the mood for a good time from the word go.

And every detail is important – the venue, the food, the arrangements etc etc. But the food is possibly most critical. Whisky is powerful stuff, but even the thirstiest Scot cannot ceilidh dance into the wee small hours on an empty stomach. We went to a wedding some years ago in a very majestic Scottish castle, but ended up doing mass minibus runs to the local chip shop. There was no food at the reception and everyone was too hungry to dance and needed party fuel urgently!

For our wedding lunch we took our family to The Oak Tree at Balmaha on Loch Lomond. If you are in the area it carries a strong recommendation from us! Our chosen dessert was Clootie dumpling. Clootie is like so many features of Scottish style, culture, or food; quite traditional in origin but is so damn good that it’s easy to give it a modern twist and make it something pretty cool. In this case, a little high quality vanilla ice cream or, if you prefer to keep it ‘retro cool tradtional’ then some fresh custard, and bingo – You have just fuelled a room full of people to complete many dance floor pounding hours.

Whatever you want to burn off your Clootie doing, you’ll find a generous hunk of it in our Sheer Belter and Pure Stoater hampers.

Update on the UK Slacklining Masters

I am pleased to announce that Slackline Brothers Inc. will be proud sponsors of the competition.

They will be providing the lines, Ric will be judging, and there will also be spot prizes of slacklining gear up for grabs. This is a huge commitment from these guys, for which I am most grateful.

Velvet Antlers fresh gingerbread & lemon icing

John Watson of Stone Country emailed last night to say he was coming up from Glasgow for the day for some bouldering in Glen Nevis. To me, this meant one thing – get baking.

Dave has sworn by the powers of my gingerbread for some time now, and is, not to blow my own trumpet or anything, directly responsible for ascents of at least two 8c+’s in Scotland and some of the hardest boulder problems by Dave and his climbing partners (Michael Tweedley being a big fan).

I meant to take a photo of my evenings endeavours this morning, but I wasn’t out of bed fast enough, Dave and John had already waded in.

The recipe, with a few Velvet Antlers alterations, is from good old Nigella ‘Domestic Goddess’ Lawson. The copy of her book I use actually belongs to Dave 'Domestic Goddess’ MacLeod, who can whip up a mean batch of biscuits, let me tell you. So, if you want the ultimate crag food that is guaranteed to get you results on a chilly winter’s days climbing, you want to get baking….

For the gingerbread:

150g unsalted butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle
2 teaspoons fresh, finely grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
250ml milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 2 teaspoons warm water
300g plain flour

For the icing:

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
175g icing sugar
1 tablespoon warm water

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C/gas mark 3.

Melt the butter, sugar, golden syrup, treacle, ginger and cinnamon together. Take off the heat and add the milk, eggs and bicarbonate of soda.

Sieve the flour into your batter slowly, whilst stirring, or else it goes lumpy! You’ll end up with a very liquid batter, hopefully.

Pour it into a tray lined with baking parchment and cook for ¾ hour – 1 hour. (A knife should come out clean.) When you take it out the oven, lift out the tray and leave it on a rack for a couple of minutes and then peel the paper off, or it goes soggy. Leave there to cool.

Once cooled, if you can wait that long, I usually can’t, crack on with the icing. Stir the lemon juice in first, then add the water bit by bit and slap it on your deliciously sticky gingerbread.

How easy is that? It’s a doddle, and guaranteed to make you climb harder. Let me know how you get on.

Fort William UK Slacklining Masters

Jon Ritson on the first highline in Scotland? Correct me if I'm wrong!

The good news is that the entry forms are now available to download here for the very first UK Slacklining Masters and the really, really good news is that there is now even more money to be won. The cash prizes for the comp are now totalling a whopping two grand.

UK Champion = £500

UK 2nd place = £300

UK 3rd place = £200

International Champion = £500

International 2nd place = £300

International 3rd place = £200

If that's not a hefty incentive to book your ticket to Fort William, I don't know what is.

The comp will be kicking off at 12pm on Saturday 23rd February at the Lochaber Leisure Leisure Centre playing fields with the Grand Final at 4pm.

Remember, entry is totally free, so there's no excuse not to enter.

Keep an eye on my blog for updates on the comp.

Landward filming stint comes to an end

My fledging career as a guest TV presenter with Landward has taken me to some pretty stunning places over the past couple of weeks but sadly, filming has now finished for my wee bit. We had an absolutely amazing day on Lochnagar (stream the strand here) which I actually managed to watch all the way through without having to cover my eyes and/or ears.

Doing my piece to camera on Suilven

Last week we had an extremely soggy day on the Cobbler where we had to bail at the Narnain boulders as the camera was about to give up the ghost due to getting soaked by that penetrating, fine rain that just permeates everything. We then jumped straight in the car and headed straight up to Suilven in the North West. As we arrived in the dark, when we stepped out the door in the morning to see this hill I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, what a funny shaped wee hill!

The lunar landscape of the North West Highlands

The path was straight up the side into the saddle on the ridge. It was that straight-up that David the cameraman got vertigo on the path and almost didn’t make it to the ridge, and couldn’t go any further once we got there. I’m sure he won’t mind me telling y’all that…We were running out of time anyway, as our lift back would have been arriving at the foot of the path shortly.

Suilven

Adam and his Argo Cat (with quarry)

We actually cheated on the hefty walk-in that morning and cadged a lift in off of some stalkers on the estate in their Argo-Cat. I did wonder how they were going to get the deer and us back if they shot anything that day, as we pretty much took up all of the back on the way out between the three of us and the camera kit. My query was answered when they came to pick us up with a hind in the back – just pile in on top. It was a bit of a squeeze. To say the least. I feel I’ve come a long way in the past 7 months, coming from working in a department store in the city every day, to bouncing around in the back of a mini-tank on a deid deer in the northern highlands. Quite a different office!

Awesome.

The return of the Fort William Picture House? Yes please!

I found out this afternoon that plans are afoot for the cinema in Cameron Square in Fort William to reopen. This got me very excited. Dave and I started visiting Fort William about 12 years ago to go climbing. On rest/rainy days you would often find us in the cinema watching films that had been released back home in Glasgow a good number of months before. I’ll never forget the first time it rained whilst we were watching a film and realising that the cinema had a tin roof that the rain was just absolutely stoating off and drowning out the film. And then the curtains shut half way through the film for a break; now that never happened in the UGC.

Back in Glasgow, I used to visit the silver screen at least a couple of times a week (I clearly had too much time on my hands in those days) but I now have to rely on getting my fix of the flicks delivered through my letterbox due to the nearest cinema being 60 miles away but would love, love, love to see a cinema back in the Fort so, please, comment here if you would like to see the return of the cinema in Fort William, or maybe you live in some far-flung place in the world where a local cinema is really appreciated, let me know and I’ll pass your comments on and hopefully that will help persuade them to reopen that lovely cinema, though hopefully without the intervals?

Fort William Mountain Festival Launch

A couple of months ago The Fort William Mountain Festival asked me if I wanted to get involved with the festival. I said sure, naively thinking they would ask me to turn up during the week of the festival and collect tickets or something, but I began to think something was amiss when Mike Pescod asked me to come to the next committee meeting and before you know it I was on the committee and I’d been given the task of organising a massive slacklining competition. Oh dear. Never having stepped on a line, this may be quite a massive undertaking. So step forward Jon Ritson.

Once I heard that I was going to be organising this comp I quickly emailed Dave’s slacklining guru contact to find his address didn’t work anymore as he’d moved jobs. After a bit of underhanded cyber stalking (creepy, I know, but it worked) I tracked him down and he has very kindly been helping me out with the intricacies of a new and rapidly developing sport that I knew nothing about.

Jon and his friend Charlie also came up from the Lakes for the press launch of the festival on Tuesday. Driving rain did nothing to deter him though as he rather impressively managed to walk the line repeatedly on cue with a bank of photographers and film crews doing their level best to distract him. Is this the first highline in Scotland?

You wouldn’t believe the amount of cajoling it took to get him in that kilt. Never having worn one, he stepped out his van with it on back to front –it was very funny to this Scots Lass!

So the first British Slacklining Masters has been born, come along to Fort William on 23rd February and try it out – you never now, you might win something! Like £500! And I won’t make you walk across a waterfall….not unless you want to…

Check out the video:

Presenting - it's more difficult than you would imagine

The past couple of days have been the start of a steep learning curve for me as I attempted to turn my hand to presenting for the BBC. Landward kindly asked if I would present a piece on the origin and meaning of Scottish hill names for them over the next couple of weeks. But I couldn’t help but wonder as I drove home after the first couple of days filming if they were sitting in their own car crying, “What have we done?” Dave and I have been interviewed a few times, both on and off the camera and I now realise it’s amazing how comfortable I had become answering what are usually really rather personal questions about myself and my relationship with my husband. It’s a different kettle of fish when the tables are turned and it’s you asking the questions, thank goodness then for Peter Drummond, the author of Scottish Hill Names who was very patient with this first time interviewer. Lashing rain meant we had to head indoors to the Clachaig for filming on the first day which was a shame as it would have been good to head out into Glen Coe with Peter - what this man doesn’t know about hill names isn’t, as the saying goes, worth knowing.

Day two was spent getting to know Schiehallion a little better. David Williamson, the cameraman, shouldered the camera and tripod and charged off up the path with the producer not far behind him, with me bringing up the rear, some way off. Did nobody tell them I was as slow as the proverbial week in the jail? Oh dear, it looks like I might have to get somewhat fitter over the next few weeks as I have a fair few mountains left to climb.

The first instalment should be going out this Friday at 7pm, BBC2.

Don’t laugh.

Velvet Antlers – where does that come from then?

It’s something we’ve been asked by everyone we’ve spoken to since Claire hatched the idea for our hamper business. We’re quite pleased about that, since that was of course our intention!

Velvet Antlers sells hampers and gifts. Claire’s concept for the flavour of the hampers we make was something Scottish – but new and a bit fresher. So much business and products coming out of Scotland keeps turning out an old cliché involving tartan, kilts, haggis, whisky and bagpipes. We certainly don’t think these icons are old and past. Indeed, we each own at least one piece of tartan clothing (I have two kilts!), eat haggis, drink whisky and are quite partial to a bit of piping.

It’s just that there’s a bit more to Scottish style. And the ‘bit more’ is pretty damn cool. We’ve tried to work that more modern and less known Scottish style into the stuff we make. So we needed a name that suited that.

The red deer that we see everywhere when were out in the hills climbing have a lovely smooth velvet covering their antlers while they grow. Antler velvet has been used as a nutritional supplement. If you google “Antler Velvet” you’ll find loads of results. We thought that the image of the red deer stag was very Scottish, but the velvet matched our idea of putting a lovely style and feel on a quite traditional product.

What do you think of the name? please comment below!

We are Velvet Antlers

I’ll start this blog by introducing ourselves and Velvet Antlers. Velvet Antlers is new company selling luxury hampers filled with the very best food and gifts that Scotland has to offer. It is run by Claire (me!) and Dave MacLeod; Dave being my wingman, there to provide moral and technical support when called upon, which is quite often, as it happens. My background is quite varied, like a lot of people I guess.

My professional background is in retail management in Glasgow, which all changed when we took the life changing decision to move to the Scottish Highlands. I still wanted to carry on doing what I was doing though as I had worked hard to get where I was and the perfect outlet for this was combing my passion of fine food with the joys of internet shopping. The decision to move to the Scottish Highlands was borne out of the desire for Dave to be nearer the mountains (more later!) and a keen willingness from me to live in a place that I have fallen in love with. Who can argue with this as a view out of their office window?

So what do I do when not making hampers?

Another big passion of mine is photography. I trained in photography, graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2003. I’m still as keen as ever to take photos, and I will regularly post my latest work on here to keep you up to date. They are usually of this guy...

Dave, being a keen (and rather well known) climber, finds living at the foot of Ben Nevis is pretty much an ideal spot for him to live. In between finding new climbs and helping me run Velvet Antlers, he gives lectures to international audiences and coaches climbers around the UK and Europe.

Velvet Antlers is here to provide you with amazing Scottish food and gifts. I’ve used my art-school training, fine food tasting, retail experience and knowledge of Scotland to provide something that not only looks contemporary and unique but tastes pretty damn good too. So welcome on board the Velvet Antlers blog, subscribe to our RSS feed to keep up to date with all the latest about Claire and Dave MacLeod and the latest in our adventures with Scottish food.