Blogs from Fort William, Inverness-shire, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe - page 3

Had made a reservation in the restaurant of the Alexandra Hotel where I stayed a few years ago. First I took half pint Foster for the waiter saaid they don t have bad scottish beer and Foster, Australian, brewed in Glasgow, is the best. probably he means the margin. The glas was special with the text Half Pint CE MO9. This means that one of the certifying companies started to make standards for beerglasses. Certainly a good business for a thing you don t have to do. Than I ordered an Ovenbaked pie case with char grilled fillet stonaway black pudding & marmelade with mashed potato cake. I dont know what s inside the Black Pudding and perhaps better keep it that way. Food was not bad and there was life music An old couple, really ... read more

I've never really hiked mountains before, but one of the guys in the office thought it would be good to get a team of 4 together to do the 3 peaks challenge - which involves hiking the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales within a 24 hour period, including driving between the mountains (and they are somewhat epic drives). I'd been curious to see that part of the UK, and foolishly took him up on the challenge. The team consisted of two Canadian mounties who had clearly done a lot of hiking in their time, and one angry Irishman, who I think had done a fair bit of hiking, but between trying to understand his accent and taking the expletives out of his sentences I wasn't sure what he had done. So we had a ... read more

Geo: 56.8165, -5.11208Okay, so we didn't actually stay IN Fort Willliam... we actually spent the two nights in Roy Bridge. And we didn't actually stay IN Roy Bridge either... it was two miles down a rainy highway AGAIN. And we didn't actually do ANYTHING I had hoped or planned to in this part of Scotland. Just shows I can plan all I want... sometimes things just don't go my way. Sometimes, something better comes along, too. =)How did this happen? Well you see.. millions of years ago... not really, more like a couple weeks ago, when I booked the hostel, I didn't realize it wasn't actually anywhere near Fort William, even though it's listed under Fort William. Tricky bastards. Roy Bridge is 17 miles east of Fort William, which is not a problem at all if ... read more

Well, the tallest mountain in the UK is deserving of it's title. Having not climbed Snowdon or 'The Pike' as the pros call it, I had no idea what to expect from Ben Nevis. Always wanting a challenge and seeing it as valuable training for peaks 'to be climbed' in the near future we planned out trip with a three day window to allow for bad weather. We booked into the dorm rooms of the local Glen Nevis youth hostel which is placed very close to the start of the 'tourist trail'. The proximity to the path is pretty much all that can be said for the Glen Nevis Youth Hostel, in all other respects it is a bog standard youth hostel and having not stayed in one for some years, it was an interesting reminder.... ... read more

Hello All, While I might have appeared to fall of the face of the earth, this is not the case. I have been quite busy in the last couple of days. Lots of work as well as lots of galivanting. I am enjoying playing in the band again as well as we got 6 inches of powder on Tuesday. Unfortunately I had 4 hrs of teaching on Tuesday and therefore couldn't partake in the wonders of powder. I did get to play on Wednesday and managed to put a rather large hole into the base of my snowboard. It is about 3 inches long by an inch wide and right down to the core of the board. It will need to be repaired and of course the people in ski hire are taking forever to get ... read more