Blogs from Perthshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe

I had a bit of a hiatus of ideas over the summer and was patiently waiting for something decent to pop up. Then it happened! A group of us were assembling for the hill race at Killin Highland games in early August. Don Reid, Westies Stalwart and midweek race regular asked me if Killin was “K” in an A to Z of Perthshire. The seed germinated and after a couple of hours on google and using the appropriate OS maps, I had a plan which on paper looked pretty reasonable. A good mixture of running in beautiful places in an area famous for its autumn colours. A few days ago, I loaded Mogwai into the CD player and pointed the car north toward Aberfeldy. A fine place to start as I could do a circular run, ... read more

I really must buy some new maps. Not that there was a geographical issue with the 1984 version of OS sheet 43 Braemar to Blair Atholl. It is always the memories that floor me. Using maps from a by gone age take me back to my days as a race snake in the mid eighties where distance and height was no object for a day out. Sheet 43 has a number of good days on it. These included a trot over my favourite munros Ben a Ghlo and Cairn Laith. Also there was a great long day leaving Aviemore around 09:30 and making Blair Atholl for a leisurely pint before boarding the 17:40 train – causing much amusement in the Greenmantle pub after Tuesday intervals when I explained my absence later that evening. 35 years later, ... read more

Autumn clock change and the onset of early darkness is a bit of a challenge for every runner and a sure sign that the depths of winter are approaching. The transition from long summer days in simmet and shorts to wrapped up running through the winter gloom is continually a difficult adaptation. Im lucky – shift work and more days off by doing longer working hours allows me the opportunity to almost always run in daylight. Its just that “daylight” in November and December can be very grey. Every good day for the rest of the year is a bonus and after some challenging weather last week, I was lucky to eek out the brightest of autumn days as I collected more letters on the Perhshire A to Z. Again, I was mostly retracing my steps ... read more

To those who are thinking ‘when is she going to write anything’, we had a little difficulty leaving Aus ha ha. Everything was going smoothly until our departure time of 10:15pm to Doha passed by in Adelaide Airport and the ‘Delayed’ was still marked against our flight. At 11:45, two hundred passengers heard the words we all were dreading: “the flight has been cancelled”. Long story short, we flew out of Melbourne Airport (yes, Melbourne) the following night at 7:05pm to Doha. And if anyone is ever in that situation, I can highly recommend Qatar’s choice of Peppers for accommodation in Adelaide although flying with Qatar again might require more consideration. We hired a car at Edinburgh Airport. We had booked a car “something like a Ford Focus” and were given an almost new Audi. Thank ... read more

Day 6 Catch Up to Callander I arose this morning to have my £2 international hostel breakfast with people from Germany, Sweden, Spain, France, China, USA, Scotland, and England. A good simple breakfast of coffee, juice , cereal, scones, toast, oatmeal, and fruit. Today was to be my test day for my saddle sore remedy. Hopefully, caught early enough to resolve. The ride started overcast, with some brighter spots, and was initially the usual climb and decent. There seemed to be lots of manor houses along the way, with many of those not in manors, living in what were once the gatehouses to the manors. They must still have gamekeepers for some manors also, as I cycled through a few flocks of pheasants. One group along the road, had to be a hundred or more. They ... read more