Ardnamurchan Powerboatin!

With all the manic work of Echo Wall I’ve not had time to upload these pictures of a lovely day out with Peter and Cat last month on their boat on Loch Sunart, Ardnamurchan. Being in the driving seat of that thing was well cool! We aren’t used to boats and we thought it was really cool that you could jump in a wee inflatable boat not far from the house and be out at sea near Mull in no time.

Me at the helm. Woohoo!

Just how many jackets can one person wear?

Today's lunch

I went out to buy lunch today. This is what I came home with. Nice eh? And yes, I did eat all of it! The flower garnish are Nasturtiums – completely edible, according to Becky from Shielfoot Organics. How did they taste? ‘Woody’, just like Becky told me they ‘would’ be.

Today’s lunch shopping was rather more interesting than normal; at Lochaber Larder’s monthly food producers gathering and market in Fort William. Among the delights on offer was Tigh Fuine’s (Gaelic – ‘bakehouse’) gorgeous breads. Mandy bakes daily and delivers her loaves to the door (so long as you leave her the dosh in a jam jar first!) every morning. Velvet Antlers headquarters will be partaking daily from now on. If you’d like Tigh Fuine’s number, drop us a line. I arrived back home with warm bread, edible flowers, chutney, rainbow eggs and more than a few new friends.

So there you have it. If the story behind this not-so-humble sandwich doesn’t convince you that seeking out local food is good for you, nothing will.

Fort William wall opening night

Last night saw the official opening of Alan Kimber’s new bouldering wall at Calluna, Fort William. For the past couple of months, Dave has been setting all the problems on the wall, built by Scott Muir. I even had a shot myself of setting some problems but we don’t have a telly at Chez MacLeod and the lure of the flat screen in the kitchen of the wall was too great most nights and ended up watching Taggart/Eastenders/Bear Grylls para-motoring about the place instead of unpacking holds.

Insert your own comedy caption in the comments!

Tom utilising his visualisation techniques.

The motley crew that made it happen - Scott, Alan and Dave.
Visualising a full brass band?

The entire Extreme Dream team came over from Aviemore for the opening and I’m amazed to say we staggered home at half twelve and most of them were still bouldering strong. That’s keen.

It’s great that there is finally a decent wall in Fort William itself and I’m pretty sure that there is going to be a brilliant scene there.

Kiting on Camusdarach beach

Such are the joys of living in the Highlands, taking Dave on a driving lesson doesn't mean doing circuits of industrial estates and supermarket carparks like I did when I learned to drive. Instead, we circumnavigated 1/4 of the total number of roundabouts in Fort William (i.e. one) and headed down the Road To the Isles. Happily, this takes you to the beautiful beach of Camusdarach. It was snowing when we arrived but I whipped the kite out nonetheless and Dave captured the front blowing over to reveal clear blue skies and some jaw-dropping scenery.

One of the drawbacks of having high winds blow away the storm clouds is that it can be quite hard on your kite, with one string snapping, quickly mended, followed shortly after by the other one going as well. Never mind, it was worth it.

What a difference a couple of minutes can make...

With the beach more or less to ourselves, Dave took some snaps and got increasingly cold in the wind. For a hardy climber he can be a bit soft sometimes! To be fair, he is still suffering a bit from frost nip, so I let him off and we headed to Glenfinnan for some soup to heat him up.

The snowy peaks of Rum

Skiing for the first time at Nevis Range

Waaah - how do you stop these things?

It was all systems go this morning for meeting Lisa Wharton, local writer and editor, for lunch at the Farm Shop when a sneaky wee email sent at the last minute asked if I fancied a spot of light skiing at Nevis Range afterwards. Not the kind of email one normally receives but I thought what the heck, I'll take my thermals along and see what happens.

Crikey, it's a lot harder than it looks. Lisa, a seasoned skiier, started me off with trying some turns. Then we back tracked a little and tried snow ploughs. I knew I wasn't doing so well when she then said "Right, I think we'll practice just standing still." Oh dear. We got there in the end though and I managed 4 whole turns in a row without falling over just before we got back to the gondola as it got dark.

Lisa looking somewhat more at home

What I find amazing though, is that this was all just a 10 minute drive from my house. Fort William keeps surprising me.

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.

Avoiding the Antlers

I write this post for the Velvet Antlers blog in the car beside Claire on the way north through the highlands – heading home from work down south. As we leave the southern highlands and climb up onto the stunning barren expanse of Rannoch Moor, I can feel a familiar feeling of worry triggering in my head. What is it?

Antlers!

That is, the sight of them appearing through the windscreen. Gruesome thought I know. So let me explain why I feel the need to blog about it. Since our early visits to the highlands as teenage climbers, we noticed that despite a long hard day’s mountaineering on the north face of Ben Nevis, the most dangerous moments of the day came on the drive home late in the evening. One minute you are driving on a dark and deserted highland road. Next minute everyone in the car would be screaming as we slalom-swerved between some antlered obstacles. Scary stuff.

Now we love the highland red deer enough to name our company after them. The sight of them bounding across the mountains either alone or in their hundreds in huge clans is quite awesome. But the sight of one bounding in front of your car as you hurtle along is not funny.

Where red deer go to learn the green cross code.

Since we became highland locals, we’ve really learned that avoiding them is a really big part of moving about in the highlands if you want to stay safe and hang onto your vehicle! But we also realised that so many folks, like we used to be as outside visitors, are not aware of the danger.

It might seem weird for two adventurous types into rock climbing and mountaineering to lecture about road safety. But let the following facts do the talking. Since living here for less than a year, we have had one serious collision with major car and stag damage (twenty of them ran out in front of Claire’s car at once – we had no chance!). I’ve been in the car during at six separate collisions with Red Deer, one writing off a friend’s car. Most of the people we know who have lived in or visited the highlands have written off at least one car. And we know about one accident that resulted in life changing injuries for the passengers. So forgive us for the warning.

Here are our Antler avoiding top tips when driving in the highlands:

- Winter is worst (we’re not sure if it’s true, but we have been told they come down not only to escape the mountain blizzards but to lick the salt off the roads – anyone know?)
- Rannoch Moor is the worst spot in Scotland and we see accidents virtually non-stop through winter.
- The A83 between Spean Bridge and Laggan, and the Cluanie pass are also virtually guaranteed to see at least one stag crossing per journey. We totally recommend going pretty slow here.
- If you have a passenger, recruit them for ‘deer radar’ duty and keep a look out for antlers bobbing around in the dark next to the road or the shiny eyes in the headlights. This saves so many accidents. Oh, and make sure you clarify that if they shout “DEER!” they mean “BRAKE!” and you don’t answer “Yes dear?”.
- Be super careful when your headlights are dipped. You’ll have no warning to hit the anchors in time if a stag appears in your line of fire.

So next time you are belting along a straight highland road with no other traffic in sight and you get stuck behind someone inexplicably doing 40 – yes, they do know something you don’t.

Stuff we chose for our hampers, part 2 – Arran Aromatics

The Scots are a damn lucky bunch when it comes to holidays. Glaswegians like us especially so. As well as the usual choices of getting on a plane anywhere, we have an almost inexhaustible resource of lovely places to discover in our own islands. Often, it’s financial constraints that lead Scot’s to holiday within Scotland, but it’s probably the time most outdoor lovers discovered the highlands and islands.

The isle of Arran is a popular haunt of Glaswegians off work for the summer ‘Glasgow Fair’ weekend, summer holidays, weekend warrior trips and these days, stag and hen dos!

For us, it was Arran’s famous granite mountains that brought us across on the Friday night crossing to Brodick and the long trek up the road to Glen Rosa campsite. Later, we discovered the quietude of camping in Glen Sannox beside some old ruins. This became our base for exploring the cliffs of Cir Mhor, The Bastion and Cuithe Mheadonach. The mood of these mountains really leaves an impression on you. Such a small mountain range, but I remember feeling so remote hanging off a huge granite flake listening to the silence of the summer mountain air and feeling the warm up-draught as the 300 foot plated granite wall soaked up the afternoon sun. Only the sight of the tiny wee Calmac ferry scurrying back and forth across the firth of Clyde to Ardrossan reminds you that civilisation is not too far away.

On that summer updraught I also remember the smells. They always seem so much stronger in the hebridean mountains than anywhere else we have spent time. Blossoming heather, peat drying in the summer heat, and the raw untouched granite, as the crystals under my feet scrittle slightly, disturbed for the first time since the glaciers left.

Arran Aromatics have made it their life’s work to bottle this most exquisite of sensory experiences. So we thought it was perfect for Velvet Antlers hampers.

Icy Delights

Last week in Lochaber was simply beautiful. Here are some pics of the river Nevis across the road from us as it gave in to the deep freeze. This week, of course is drab and driech again, but you wouldn’t enjoy the good times so much it was always perfect, would you?