It's almost still Scott's 39th birthday, USA time, so didn't miss it by much! Welcome to your 40th year, Scott! Memories of last summer down in Southern California:
See you in Seattle in about 15 weeks!
Ian R. Stewart Family Blog
Friday, 30 March 2012
Belated happy birthday to Scott!
From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/
It's almost still Scott's 39th birthday, USA time, so didn't miss it by much! Welcome to your 40th year, Scott! Memories of last summer down in Southern California:
See you in Seattle in about 15 weeks!
It's almost still Scott's 39th birthday, USA time, so didn't miss it by much! Welcome to your 40th year, Scott! Memories of last summer down in Southern California:
See you in Seattle in about 15 weeks!
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Costa del Deeside!
From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/
Hard to believe it's only March - weather like this is scarce enough in mid-summer, let alone this early. For the 3rd day in a row, Aberdeenshire set new Scottish temperature records for March, with our local weather station at Aboyne being the spot where it was recorded yesterday and Monday. Today's looking good as well - perhaps a bit more hazy. Change is coming at the weekend - they're talking about snow on the hills!
Today is the day that the Everest surveyor arrives to do the detailed measurements for our new kitchen - Jo's worried in case she's overlooked anything.
Today is also the start of our midweek golf competition. I'm hoping it'll be light until almost 8pm tonight so we can get round 18 holes OK. Daytime extends by 20 minutes or so per week from here on in so it'll soon get easier.
I'm struggling to finish one of my holiday books - can't find the reading time now that we're back home and I'm working again. When we were in Port Elliott with Chris' Mum and Dad, we went to their local book store, and I ended up buying 3 crime fictions - knowing Jo would read them too - one Swedish, one Norwegian and one Japanese - all in the same vein.
Whilst on holiday, I read The Art of Fielding (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Fielding-Chad-Harbach/dp/0007374445) and also Patti Smith's semi-autobiographical novel about her early years and, in particular, her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe), who's now been dead over 20 years. I left both books with Kelly and Chris - but they might be in the skip by now!
Oh - and I finally got my Archos fixed yesterday, so I can now start getting the recorded programmes off our Sky box. I've got my new i-Phone 4 as well - it's definitely got a longer battery life than the previous version I had on holiday, but still nowhere near as long as the Blackberry. There's some nice features on the 4, but I still hate the i-Tunes software!
Hard to believe it's only March - weather like this is scarce enough in mid-summer, let alone this early. For the 3rd day in a row, Aberdeenshire set new Scottish temperature records for March, with our local weather station at Aboyne being the spot where it was recorded yesterday and Monday. Today's looking good as well - perhaps a bit more hazy. Change is coming at the weekend - they're talking about snow on the hills!
Today is the day that the Everest surveyor arrives to do the detailed measurements for our new kitchen - Jo's worried in case she's overlooked anything.
Today is also the start of our midweek golf competition. I'm hoping it'll be light until almost 8pm tonight so we can get round 18 holes OK. Daytime extends by 20 minutes or so per week from here on in so it'll soon get easier.
I'm struggling to finish one of my holiday books - can't find the reading time now that we're back home and I'm working again. When we were in Port Elliott with Chris' Mum and Dad, we went to their local book store, and I ended up buying 3 crime fictions - knowing Jo would read them too - one Swedish, one Norwegian and one Japanese - all in the same vein.
Whilst on holiday, I read The Art of Fielding (http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Fielding-Chad-Harbach/dp/0007374445) and also Patti Smith's semi-autobiographical novel about her early years and, in particular, her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe), who's now been dead over 20 years. I left both books with Kelly and Chris - but they might be in the skip by now!
Oh - and I finally got my Archos fixed yesterday, so I can now start getting the recorded programmes off our Sky box. I've got my new i-Phone 4 as well - it's definitely got a longer battery life than the previous version I had on holiday, but still nowhere near as long as the Blackberry. There's some nice features on the 4, but I still hate the i-Tunes software!
Monday, 26 March 2012
Edinburgh weekend 2
From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/
The sun came out in earnest in Edinburgh on Sunday and we walked through Princes St. Gardens to the Scottish National Gallery. We had originally planned to go to another National Trust property (Gladstone's Land) but it doesn't open on Sundays until April. Which reminds me - I forgot to say that we visited the Georgian Town House at Charlotte Square on Saturday morning.
A quick look at some of the paintings then it was time for tea and coffee outside the cafe there. Next stop was the Mound, then down the Royal Mile to Holyrood to sit and read papers and books in the sun. It was such a lovely spot - Salisbury Crags as a backdrop and Holyrood Palace - then some idiot decided it would be a good idea to blow half a billion pounds of our money and build the monstrosity that is the Scottish Parliament. It's not ageing well either. Here's Jo reading from her iPad:
We had lunch at the Palace tearoom then caught a 36 bus - thank you everyone for our bus passes! - down a convoluted route to Leith. It was our plan to do the other bit of the Water of Leith walk from Leith to Dean Bridge. First of all, a pint at the lovely Teuchter's Landing:
By this time of day - approaching 4 pm - the place was mobbed. It's quite a small bar inside, but there's lots of space outside, including a floating barge with seats. Getting served wasn't quite so easy. This spot was where the steamboats to Aberdeen used to leave from.
Leith has been gentrified in the last decade or so and it now has a bit of a look of Amsterdam:
We spotted another GBG pub - the Malt and Hops. Jo - not me - suggested we try one more in there before setting off on our walk. Mistake - we met a fellow CAMRA member, Norman Mackenzie, in there and it was several beers later before we left. The sun was now setting fast:
We had to get a shifty on or it would have been dark before we got back. We made it OK and rewarded ourselves with a quick half pint at Kay's Bar - another old favourite - and then grabbed a Pizza Express meal before retiring.
The sun came out in earnest in Edinburgh on Sunday and we walked through Princes St. Gardens to the Scottish National Gallery. We had originally planned to go to another National Trust property (Gladstone's Land) but it doesn't open on Sundays until April. Which reminds me - I forgot to say that we visited the Georgian Town House at Charlotte Square on Saturday morning.
A quick look at some of the paintings then it was time for tea and coffee outside the cafe there. Next stop was the Mound, then down the Royal Mile to Holyrood to sit and read papers and books in the sun. It was such a lovely spot - Salisbury Crags as a backdrop and Holyrood Palace - then some idiot decided it would be a good idea to blow half a billion pounds of our money and build the monstrosity that is the Scottish Parliament. It's not ageing well either. Here's Jo reading from her iPad:
We had lunch at the Palace tearoom then caught a 36 bus - thank you everyone for our bus passes! - down a convoluted route to Leith. It was our plan to do the other bit of the Water of Leith walk from Leith to Dean Bridge. First of all, a pint at the lovely Teuchter's Landing:
By this time of day - approaching 4 pm - the place was mobbed. It's quite a small bar inside, but there's lots of space outside, including a floating barge with seats. Getting served wasn't quite so easy. This spot was where the steamboats to Aberdeen used to leave from.
Leith has been gentrified in the last decade or so and it now has a bit of a look of Amsterdam:
We spotted another GBG pub - the Malt and Hops. Jo - not me - suggested we try one more in there before setting off on our walk. Mistake - we met a fellow CAMRA member, Norman Mackenzie, in there and it was several beers later before we left. The sun was now setting fast:
We had to get a shifty on or it would have been dark before we got back. We made it OK and rewarded ourselves with a quick half pint at Kay's Bar - another old favourite - and then grabbed a Pizza Express meal before retiring.
Edinburgh weekend
From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/
We've just returned from our weekend in Edinburgh - down by train on Friday afternoon and back this morning. Our apartment at The Edinburgh Residence (http://www.townhousecompany.com/theedinburghresidence/) was very nice. We were in the basement of a large property in the New Town, with bay windows and a door leading out to the street. Well located at Rothesay Terrace - a bit nearer Haymarket than Waverley.
We walked down to Stockbridge on Friday evening and, after a beer, walked along to the Loon Fung restaurant which we last visited over a decade ago - it's a favourite of Jo's pal, Anne Mason. Very nice it was too.
Saturday was pleasant enough, although nowhere near as warm as they were having it back home in Aberdeenshire where a new Scottish temperature record for March was set yesterday. We walked up to Frederick St and found a nice first floor cafe for brunch. In the afternoon, we decided to head for the Water of Leith walk which stretches all the way from Leith to Balerno. We would be joining it about a quarter of the way along at Dean Bridge.
It was a very pleasant start to the walk but it soon turned sour when we had to leave the peace of the waterside and cross the main road, round Murrayfield and then along towards Saughton. It wasn't helped by a couple of diversions to the walk route, caused apparently by work on the infamous Edinburgh tram system. We also got stopped - twice - by the Police. Nothing we had done wrong, but there was some major incident and they had roped off a large area of Saughton and weren't letting anyone in or out. We've subsequently discovered it was a murder - check http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/news/301506-death-of-man-in-park-treated-as-suspicious/
We were pretty fed up by now and considered quitting - the walk wasn't anything like as nice as we had believed it to be. However, we decided to carry on for a bit - we managed to pick up the trail again after being choked by fumes and drowned out by heavy traffic around Chesser Avenue. The trail took us round an allotment - I've never seen one that was so heavily fenced off and with barbed wire at the top too - there seemed to be more security here than at nearby Saughton Prison!
The prospect of a quiet pint in the Diggers seemed even more alluring now but we finally made it to the Water of Leith Visitor Centre (http://www.waterofleith.org.uk/centre/) at Slateford. Refreshed by tea, coffee and some of the chocolate that Lucy sent for our birthdays, we set off on the next leg towards Colinton Dell and Juniper Green. What a transformation! All of a sudden, the walk took on a complete new look - quiet, wooded - just as we had hoped. Time for a photo stop:
This also gave me the chance to rest my leg. My right knee was playing up again - I really can't walk pain-free any distance nowadays - especially on hard surfaces. It'll be interesting to see how I get on with this summer's golf - I managed OK last year, but the surgeon told me at the time of my arthroscopies 18 months ago, that I would need to have the right knee replaced fairly soon. The complication I'm concerned about is that, because the injury happened 42 years ago and wasn't fixed properly at the time, I've been compensating for it ever since, and the X-rays clearly showed how bowed both my thigh bone and my shin bone now are - that's what causes the pain. I wonder if there's any clever shoe/insole technology that would help alleviate this? Suggestions on a postcard please.
We did make it to the end of the walk - and I kept my usual track of the stats - although I missed a bit in the middle when I forgot to re-start the app after pausing it!:
I knew that Balerno was in the foothill of the Pentlands, but I didn't realise that we had climbed over 500 feet - not a lot in the great scheme of things, I know, but we just didn't notice any climbing at all - it all seemed fairly flat.
Balerno High School was at the end of the walk. the following picture of the stairs leading down to the school doesn't do it justice - it looks a very smart school indeed - and, in a different life, children, this is where you would all have gone:
Balerno High Street was the next stop in our nostalgia trip:
It wasn't pedestrianised in our days there - 30 years ago! Jo insisted we walk up the hill to the Post Office - just as a wee reminder to Kelly, who used to accompany her Mum there to collect her Child Benefit each week - and she always got a sweet treat for it - Kelly, that is!:
We had a couple of beers in the Grey Horse then took the bus back in to Edinburgh, with the mist fast descending. We got off near Rose St. and looked for somewhere nice to eat. The Abbotsford is a nice pub but I didn't realise it had a nice dining room above it - that was the clincher - good beer and nice, linen tablecloths:
Sunday tales to follow.
We've just returned from our weekend in Edinburgh - down by train on Friday afternoon and back this morning. Our apartment at The Edinburgh Residence (http://www.townhousecompany.com/theedinburghresidence/) was very nice. We were in the basement of a large property in the New Town, with bay windows and a door leading out to the street. Well located at Rothesay Terrace - a bit nearer Haymarket than Waverley.
We walked down to Stockbridge on Friday evening and, after a beer, walked along to the Loon Fung restaurant which we last visited over a decade ago - it's a favourite of Jo's pal, Anne Mason. Very nice it was too.
Saturday was pleasant enough, although nowhere near as warm as they were having it back home in Aberdeenshire where a new Scottish temperature record for March was set yesterday. We walked up to Frederick St and found a nice first floor cafe for brunch. In the afternoon, we decided to head for the Water of Leith walk which stretches all the way from Leith to Balerno. We would be joining it about a quarter of the way along at Dean Bridge.
It was a very pleasant start to the walk but it soon turned sour when we had to leave the peace of the waterside and cross the main road, round Murrayfield and then along towards Saughton. It wasn't helped by a couple of diversions to the walk route, caused apparently by work on the infamous Edinburgh tram system. We also got stopped - twice - by the Police. Nothing we had done wrong, but there was some major incident and they had roped off a large area of Saughton and weren't letting anyone in or out. We've subsequently discovered it was a murder - check http://local.stv.tv/edinburgh/news/301506-death-of-man-in-park-treated-as-suspicious/
We were pretty fed up by now and considered quitting - the walk wasn't anything like as nice as we had believed it to be. However, we decided to carry on for a bit - we managed to pick up the trail again after being choked by fumes and drowned out by heavy traffic around Chesser Avenue. The trail took us round an allotment - I've never seen one that was so heavily fenced off and with barbed wire at the top too - there seemed to be more security here than at nearby Saughton Prison!
The prospect of a quiet pint in the Diggers seemed even more alluring now but we finally made it to the Water of Leith Visitor Centre (http://www.waterofleith.org.uk/centre/) at Slateford. Refreshed by tea, coffee and some of the chocolate that Lucy sent for our birthdays, we set off on the next leg towards Colinton Dell and Juniper Green. What a transformation! All of a sudden, the walk took on a complete new look - quiet, wooded - just as we had hoped. Time for a photo stop:
This also gave me the chance to rest my leg. My right knee was playing up again - I really can't walk pain-free any distance nowadays - especially on hard surfaces. It'll be interesting to see how I get on with this summer's golf - I managed OK last year, but the surgeon told me at the time of my arthroscopies 18 months ago, that I would need to have the right knee replaced fairly soon. The complication I'm concerned about is that, because the injury happened 42 years ago and wasn't fixed properly at the time, I've been compensating for it ever since, and the X-rays clearly showed how bowed both my thigh bone and my shin bone now are - that's what causes the pain. I wonder if there's any clever shoe/insole technology that would help alleviate this? Suggestions on a postcard please.
We did make it to the end of the walk - and I kept my usual track of the stats - although I missed a bit in the middle when I forgot to re-start the app after pausing it!:
I knew that Balerno was in the foothill of the Pentlands, but I didn't realise that we had climbed over 500 feet - not a lot in the great scheme of things, I know, but we just didn't notice any climbing at all - it all seemed fairly flat.
Balerno High School was at the end of the walk. the following picture of the stairs leading down to the school doesn't do it justice - it looks a very smart school indeed - and, in a different life, children, this is where you would all have gone:
Balerno High Street was the next stop in our nostalgia trip:
It wasn't pedestrianised in our days there - 30 years ago! Jo insisted we walk up the hill to the Post Office - just as a wee reminder to Kelly, who used to accompany her Mum there to collect her Child Benefit each week - and she always got a sweet treat for it - Kelly, that is!:
We had a couple of beers in the Grey Horse then took the bus back in to Edinburgh, with the mist fast descending. We got off near Rose St. and looked for somewhere nice to eat. The Abbotsford is a nice pub but I didn't realise it had a nice dining room above it - that was the clincher - good beer and nice, linen tablecloths:
Sunday tales to follow.
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