November 2023

Happy St. Andrews Day!

For those on Facebook, there were plenty photos from our recent theatre trip to London, so I won't repeat them here. It was a short (2 nights) trip but a really nice one. We went to Tina, the Musical, the Van Gogh Experience and Cabaret. All were excellent - especially the last-named, although it comes with a word of caution as you have to be fairly broad minded. Like the film, it's set in decadent pre-war Berlin, but it's not quite as sanitised.

Last Saturday, I made my first trip to Firhill for a while to see Thistle comfortably beat Queen's Park in a Scottish Cup tie. Nice day - but a long one, leaving the house before 8 am and not getting home until 10 pm. It would have been even later if Jo hadn't driven in to Aberdeen to pick me - and Ross, who was travelling up from Edinburgh to meet his pals - up. Here's the hallowed ground:

Then, last Sunday, we finally made it along to Craigellachie. We had booked to go there over 3 years ago but the prolonged lockdowns etc meant we never made it until now. We were a little unlucky in our timing as it turned out that they couldn't do one of their themed whisky tastings as their "Quaichmaster" was off on holiday - and there was a double whammy when we were told on arrival that the famous Quaich bar with all the whiskies would not be open either due to staff absences. We were able to get a sneak look however:

It's a lovely room - perhaps another time.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon, checked in then went for a short walk to the old Telford bridge:

My earlier version of this was taken from the beach below but Jo wanted to include the towers at either end of the bridge - I managed to get one of them in this selfie.

In the heart of Speyside - whisky country - we weren't surprised to see this on our walk:

We had a really nice meal on Sunday evening in the hotel's Copper Dog bar. After breakfast on Monday morning we had originally planned to go for a walk along the adjacent Speyside Way to Aberlour and back, but the weather beat us, so, instead, we decided to go for a drive along the north coast. First stop was Cullen, which sits in a lovely rocky bay with a large viaduct as the backdrop. In between the showers there was some really bright sunshine and we saw a photo opportunity as the sun shone on the white waves crashing on the rocks but just missed the best of the light:

Next stop was Sandend where we saw some lovely small shorefront properties. The wind and waves were whipping up the sea foam on to the shore:

We drove on through Portsoy to Banff and MacDuff. By now, we were ready for a coffee stop, but didn't see anything worthwhile so headed south and eventually got a nice cafe for a spot of lunch in Turriff.

Yesterday (Wednesday) we finally got our Hep A top-up in advance of our trip to Bali in February. We'd had the first vaccine nearly 4 years ago, in preparation for going to Bali then, but Covid intervened and we had to cancel. One issue that the pharmacy did raise was the question of measles immunity. Jo's pretty certain she had it as a child but I don't remember having it, so I've now been referred to the vaccine centre as the disease has been growing again in the UK, following the drop off in children having the vaccinations.

That's about it for now. Pickleball for me again tomorrow. I've now set up a group of 17 and we're playing twice a week - it's become hugely popular and it's a great indoor sport during the winter months.

I'll plug again my appearance on BBC Radio Two's Sounds of the 70's show on Sunday - here's the link:

https://soundcloud.com/ian-stewart-911268803/sot70s-26-nov-23-no-music

To close, a couple of Audrey's photos of Kendall: