What will the weekend bring?

Well, it's been long in the planning, but it looks like our Premiership weekend in London could be disrupted. Best laid plans ....

Aberdeen airport is open OK and most flights seem to be on time - there may be a danger of fog in the morning, but the main problem seems to be at our destination. So far, both the Arsenal - Everton match on Saturday and the West Ham - Wolves match on Sunday are still on, but the forecast is for more heavy snow over London - particularly on Sunday - so we'll just have to wait and see.

In a way, it's a pity that it clashed with Scottish Cup weekend - both the Dons and the Jags have attractive home fixtures tomorrow. A win-win for us would be to have a successful weekend in London and find that both the Scottish matches were cancelled and re-arranged for dates when we could see them - but that's very selfish - Gary would be really peeved as he's going to Glasgow tomorrow.

Talking about Gary, attempts to extricate a date for the wedding from him are proving to be very difficult - at least give us a clue, Gary! Kelly has tickets back to the UK and needs to book dates soon, so she's pressing as well. My diary's pretty full as well - it would be a shame for me to miss the wedding if it clashes with one of my golf or other outings! (That was a joke, Jo).

It's true, however, that I've got a lot of things planned for this year - here's the latest update on my diary:

• 9th/10th January - footy weekend in London
• 20th January - Way to Blue (Nick Drake tribute) in Glasgow
• 30th January - Inverness to see the battle of the Jags
• 7th February - Scotland - France rugby in Edinburgh
• 20th February - Dundee v Thistle
• 22nd February - week's golf in Marrakech
• 5th March - headbang at Dave's
• 19th March - off to USA for 3 weeks
• 1st May - Peter & Srie Hodgson's daughter's wedding
• 10th/11th May - Boat of Garten
• 11th June - World Cup starts in S.A. (no, I'm not going!)
• 19th June - Scotland - England ODI (cricket) in Edinburgh
• 3rd July - England - Australia - Lord's
• 10th - 12th July - Golf at Slaley Hall, Northumberland
• 16th July - the 150th Open starts at St Andrews
• 21st August - England - Pakistan at the Oval
• 5th/6th September - Boat of Garten - our 50th outing in the 25th year!
• 17th - 20th September - West Highland Way (part) - changed date.
• 1st October - Ryder Cup starts - Wales
• 24th October - week's golf in Spain (if we can get flights!)
• and who knows, perhaps Christmas/New Year in Oz?

How are you going to squeeze the wedding in to that, Gary? Seriously, however, this is a bit of a wish list - some of the items I'm committed to, but a number are just diary notes, or even just TV watching. It would be lovely to do them all, but I've got to be realistic.

So, tonight we're off to the Simcoxes for dinner - we won't be hungry after it!

On the 12th day of Christmas

Yes, it's the day that the decorations come down - and ours have. We've still got our lovely flowers, however, and the tree is still there - albeit without its lights now:

I was back at work today, but the blizzards that came in just after lunchtime led to me making an early departure from the office. It was a slow drive home. No plans to go to the Broch this week and I may not even go in to the Aberdeen office tomorrow if the weather's still bad. My main concern now is the weekend - I'm due to go to London to see the Arsenal - Everton match on Saturday and the West Ham - Wolves match on Sunday, but the forecast for the South East doesn't look good and it may well be a wasted weekend - that would be a great shame as we have been planning and looking forward to this for such a long time. Que sera.

Before that, we are going to the Simcoxes on Friday night - always get well fed there!

Kenmore - Monday

Last one from Sunday first of all - looking from the bridge at the Kenmore Club:

On Monday, we made the short trip to Aberfeldy. We spotted this poor frozen plant in a garden:

There's a beautiful, tree lined walk up to the falls - now called the Birks (birches) o' Aberfeldy. It's a pretty steep climb and it was very slippy on the snow and ice - hard work for twa old fogies with cardiac conditions. We came across some falls and (vainly) hoped that we were near the top:

In summer, the background here would have been nothing but water. Rabbie Burns was inspired to write the Birks o' Abefeldy at this very spot:

Finally, after a lot of clambering up steps and icy slopes, we made it to the top. If you look carefully beyond Jo to just under the walkway in the background you will see some water tumbling down - most of it was now icicles and snow however:

We crossed the bridge and made our way down the other side - it was more gradual with no steps, but this meant it could be tricky coming down and keep your footing - the consequences were inevitable:

We celebrated reaching the bottom without further incident with this photo:

Lunch was at the lovely Watermill cafe and bookshop:

and you all thought I only wrote blogs in my spare time?

Our last adventure was on Tuesday morning. I had a lunchtime meeting in Glasgow and had decided that our best bet was to head back to the main A9 and go south from there, rather than risk the side roads. My SatNav didn't like that and wanted us to head the other way. After several miles imploring us to make urgent u-turns, it finally accepted we were on the A9. When we got to Perth, however, the damned computer exacted revenge by telling us we couldn't go on the usual route south of Perth due to heavy traffic and re-directed us via Edinburgh. We were now driving straight in to the sun and couldn't see a thing, particularly as our washers were all frozen up.

I decided we had to pull in to Harthill service station to clear our windscreen, but, blow me, we got stuck on the up ramp as a lorry tried vainly to tow its partner out of the snow drifts - that held us up for another 15 minutes, but we got to our destination eventually - over two and a half hours after leaving Kenmore.

Ross phoned to tell us there was more snow in Banchory and we shouldn't hang around on our homeward journey, so it was only a very brief stop in Glasgow - meeting, bite of lunch and then home. Didn't see either Dawn or Barry.

Kenmore - Sunday

Just back from our short break to Kenmore - pretty hairy journey going down, and it was a long day coming back as my SatNav led us a merry dance trying to avoid traffic congestion on the way to Glasgow.

The weather couldn't have been better when we were away - cold, dry and windless - the scenery was wonderful and it was great walking weather.

Anyway, on to the photos - the first is in the (upstairs) lounge of our cottage - note me wearing one of my Chrissy pressies from Jo. We had just returned from dinner at the on-site Waterside restaurant - we had just come second in their Saturday night quiz, winning a bottle of wine for our troubles!

On Sunday morning, we went for a stroll - these are the outdoor tables at the restaurant:

Some of the cottages were set around a courtyard with a grand entrance - note snowman:

This one is looking across Loch Tay towards the bridge that took us in to Kenmore itself:

This was our cottage - side on view - our front door was round to the right and the dormer window on the top at the right was in our lounge, with the main patio windows leading to the balcony on the right:

Our walk was through the village and in to the grounds of Taymouth Castle - latterly a hotel, but now, sadly, a major renovation project:

We came across what looked like a bit of a burial ground - were there any ashes in this large urn?:

That's all that Blogger is going to allow me to upload now - more to follow in later posts.