Another catch-up

Another couple of weeks have passed, so, without further ado, here's what I've been up to since my last blog post:

THURSDAY 6/9

Jo had been missing the regular Wednesday/Friday swimming outings with her pals, so I suggested we should take a run over to Tarland and use the leisure facilities there. It seems Jo was fated not to get any swimming as, when we got there, there was a notice saying the pool was closed "due to unforeseen circumstances". We moved on to Ballater and paid a compensatory visit to the newly re-opened tea room - The Carriage - at the former Ballater station. The building had been virtually destroyed by a huge fire a couple of years ago, but royal patronage had funded the rebuilding programme. It's probably the nicest coffee shop in the country now as demonstrated by one of the dining rooms:

That same day we finalised our big holiday next year. Time is marching on and we don't know how much longer we can carry on doing two long overseas holidays each year, allied to which our experience this year with the smoke and fires in Oregon led us to re-evaluate our plans. Perhaps instead of hitting midsummer in both Australia and USA, we could combine the two and do a round the world autumn/spring combination?

It's also my 70th in March, so it would be a special treat too. Anyway, this is the plan, leaving Aberdeen on Mon 18th Feb:

• 1 week in the Cape Town area
• 3 nights in Auckland
• Cruise - our first ever! - down east coast of NZ then back to Sydney
• 2 nights in Sydney
• 3 weeks in Adelaide
• 1 week in Palm Desert, CA
• 2 weeks in Oregon

All in, it amounts to over 9 weeks, with us not getting back home until Saturday 27th April. It'll be our longest ever stay away from home and it means we will be spending a full summer in Banchory for the first time in roughly 20 years - let's hope it's as good a summer as this year's.

Kelly has since added another little jaunt for us when we're in South Australia - she's booked us all a trip up to Cairns/Port Douglas. We're looking forward to catching up with these little tykes again:

FRIDAY 7/9

Had a nice walk up Bennachie again - the second time I'd done it.

MONDAY 10/9

Jo and I flew to Nuremberg, via Amsterdam, for our first ever CAMRA Members' Investment Club (CMIC) outing. From there, we caught the underground in to the central rail station and then a direct train to the beautiful old town of Bamberg - a UNESCO World Heritage site - and also home to an incredible number of breweries.

A welcome dinner was arranged for our party of 40 for the first night at Brauerei Spezial just across the street from our accommodation:

Our hotel was the Brauerei Fassla:

TUESDAY 11/9

An organised trip to Weyermann Maltings, a huge, well-preserved old factory, supplying raw materials to breweries world-wide, rounded off by a couple of hours in their free bar!

The afternoon was free and Jo and I roamed the medieval city, catching up with a few of our fellow travellers on our occasional refreshment stops.

WEDNESDAY 12/9

The warmest day so far - 29 C - and we chose to walk up to the castle on the hill, where Jo posed:

Back down the hill, a pit stop at the town's oldest brewpub:

THURSDAY 13/9

Short break over, it was time to return home. Another ride on the super-smooth and super-quiet Deutsche Bahn (DB) rolling stock, then the Nuremberg U-Bahn to the airport and our 2 KLM flights back to Aberdeen.

FRIDAY 14/9

No sooner was I back, then I was off again. My annual walking weekend had been booked some time ago, but somehow I had made a mess of the dates as I was supposed to leave with the other guys on Thursday. I now had to travel alone - and quickly. I was booked on the 12:30 ferry from Ardrossan to Brodick, but I made it in good time and was soon checking in to my hotel in Blackwaterfoot and then back out again for a short afternoon walk on my own.

SATURDAY 15/9

Visibility was poor - low cloud covered the top of Goatfell, the highest mountain on Arran and our target for the day. 95% of the walk was fairly comfortable, but the last bit nearly killed me. I really struggle when it gets very steep, as it did on the last leg to the summit - but I made it in the end.

SUNDAY 16/9

It was a boat trip over to the Holy Isle and a coastal walk out to the Buddhist retreat there - very nice.

MONDAY 17/9

Time for a morning coastal walk past King's Cave before heading for the early afternoon ferry and the drive home. Full details of our trip are on our hill-walking blog - https://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

TUESDAY 18/9

Back to the old routine - well almost. Tuesday is our Luca day, but this time it was our first visit to Gary's new home. It's small, as you would expect, but Luca seems happy to spend a few nights there every week, interspersed with nights at Rae Circle with his Mum.

WEDNESDAY 19/9

Time to renew Jo's passport, which we did online - after taking this photo for her new passport:

All it lacks is the prisoner number.

THURSDAY 20/9

Finally, after 18 months or so of prevaricating, we headed in to Aberdeen to sign our Powers of Attorney. Another sign of our passing years.

SATURDAY 22/9

The start of our week at the Lochanhully Resort, Carrbridge. Just Jo and I - for various reasons, the hoped-for visits from other family members didn't happen. Never mind, we'll make the most of it. The drive over was easy enough and we stopped just the other side of Tomintoul to look at a newish structure that had gone up there:

SUNDAY 23/9

A walk in to the village of Carrbridge to the most photographed spot:

Then we decided to do the Carr Plantation trail:

MONDAY 24/9

An early morning visit to the pool, sauna and steam room was followed by a trip down to Aviemore - first stop, the Mountain Cafe and its fine selection of scones and cakes. To work some of this off, we did the trail round Loch Morlich:

That's it so far.

Back again

My blog posts are becoming more irregular as time goes on. I seem to be busier now than ever. When I was working, I seemed to be able to find the time to update this more regularly. Anyway, here we go - this is what I've been up to in the last couple of weeks:

Golf at St. Andrews, Banchory and Ballater and my annual check-up with the cardiologist (all seemed fine, he said). Then it was off to Edinburgh for the Fringe for Jo and I. It wasn't quite so frantic this year - I cut back the number of events to just 6 (in 2 days) so we weren't rushing from venue to venue for a change.

We took the train down on Sunday morning and went to see shows by Jon Culshaw (impressionist) and Zoe Lyons (comedian) before dinner and then our evening show at the ShowDome at Dynamic Earth, next to Holyrood - this was an audio/visual display with 360 degree projections on to the large domed roof with the music from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon all around us. It was all a bit disorientating for Jo, who spent much of the show with her eyes closed!

We ended our day in the Guildford Arms, handily adjacent to Motel One where we were staying. There was a band playing and a good atmosphere and we stayed for a while before hitting the sack.

Monday was the last official day of the Fringe and our first event was a walking tour of the Old and New Towns, starting at Greyfriars Bobby:

We had lunch afterwards at the Grain Store with my old school pal Robert Rowan and his wife Bridget, followed by an Elvis show - a young guy from Barnsley with a distinct northern speaking accent managed to mimic the King uncannily on a succession of his big soaring ballads.

Our last show was Mark Watson (comedian) and then it was back to the Guildford Arms for dinner with Ross:

I went back to our hotel to view the closing night fireworks display from our room overlooking Princes St. - but Jo and Ross arrived after me - just as the show finished!

Back in Banchory, it was more golf for me - Banchory, Aboyne, Boat of Garten and Grantown-on-Spey - as I play catch up before the season ends.

Gary and Luca stayed overnight with us on Saturday - Luca liked his new football boots:

Looking ahead, we have a very busy month coming up. Next week, Jo and I are off to Bamberg in Bavaria for a few days, after which I head straight off to Arran for our annual walking weekend. The last week of September we'll be at the Macdonald Lochanhully Woodland Club. Gary and Luca will be with us overnight on Saturday and Mary and Brian overnight the following Friday. Must get round to seeing if Barry, Helen and Dawn might be available to join us sometime too.

First week home

We've been back a week now and, thankfully, we're finally re-establishing our sleep patterns after several fitful nights. The journey home went as planned, but it did involve 4 flights and 2 long layovers after an extremely early departure from Grants Pass on Friday morning, arriving back in Banchory about 9 pm on Saturday night, so it wasn't an easy trip. We've travelled home from Australia in less time.

Anyway, our experience in Oregon this year is making us re-think our usual holiday plans for next year. The West Coast fires arrive every summer and with them comes the smoke - some years worse than others. We certainly think mid-summer (July/August) may not be the best time to go. It's also my 70th next year (and Kelly's 40th) and we may do something completely different - watch this space.

We have a bunch of BA Air Miles and a Companion Voucher to be used next year, however - we usually use these for our American summer trip - but we weren't particularly impressed with BA this time - it feels like they are cutting back on everything.

Plenty to ponder.

I have managed one short cycle and a round of golf this week - and a monumental hill-walk on Thursday - Lochnagar - my first official Munro in my 70th year. We did the circular loop from Glen Muick and it took seven and a half hours and a record number of steps:

We also had our second Headbang of the year on Friday night and Jo and I have both had trips to our local medical practice. Jo had her ultrasound scan on Thursday - all looks well, but she awaits the official follow-up with our GP. I was back at the Dermatology Clinic on Friday and got another nitro freeze on the bridge of my nose, with another follow-up in 6 weeks.

Today (Sunday) we have Luca staying with us overnight - it's the last day of his summer holidays tomorrow (Monday).

Nothing much else to report for now, other than the fact that, after a week of relative peace and quiet at home, we have another very busy period coming up, including a trip to the Fringe in Edinburgh next weekend.

Does anyone else remember the old flower displays on the embankment at the corner of Corsee Road? I've finally managed to track down a few old photos (thanks to Jo and the Heritage Society). I had always thought they said Bonnie Banchory, but it seems they changed all the time:

This area is now just overgrown:

Do you think I should start a campaign to bring it back to its former glory?

Last full day in Oregon

Still confined to quarters here - no sign of this smoke moving soon. Here's this morning's Air Quality Index for this region:

The red "181" index (Unhealthy) is sitting right on top of Grants Pass.

Never mind - need some time to pack. Got to squeeze some additional stuff in - 2 new pairs of shoes,  3 books and a few second hand vinyl albums - it's going to be tight. Jo's got the Moose Munch and t-shirts as extras so it'll be tight for her too.

We've had two family birthdays in the last week. Last Friday, Cade turned 18 and as soon as he got back to Oregon on Saturday, he dashed off to the tattooist and got what he says is going to be the first of many "tats". Look out for photos - to be fair, it's fairly tasteful and it's on his collar bone so not generally visible when he's fully dressed. (18 is the minimum age for getting a tattoo here, in case you wondered).

On Sunday, it was Miller's 5th birthday. When Jo and I got to our hotel room in Portland on Saturday night (Sunday in Oz), Jo and I made up a quick "happy birthday" greeting for him. We got it wrong a couple of times:

https://youtu.be/5ueqZGcjDeo

before finally getting it right:

https://youtu.be/3YoISFikwZY

Feeling a bit frustrated from lack of any kind of outdoor activity recently, I decided to risk a very short afternoon ride yesterday (Wednesday), but I took the precaution of wearing a face mask that Lucy provided:

Hot and smokey

Now that we're back in Grants Pass and on the last few days of our holiday, we have triple digits heat to face and poor air quality from the smoke that still covers hundreds of miles of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Everyone will have seen the particularly devastating fire that hit Redding, where Scott and Lucy used to live - in fact, where Lucy was is now completely burnt out.

The result of all this is that we can't really spend much time outdoors and cycling and hiking opportunities are limited unless we travel much further afield.

Anyway, our journey back from Hawaii went smoothly enough and Jo and I spent another night at an airport hotel in Portland before driving Lucy's car back down to Grants Pass on Sunday. Scott had the Traeger on since early morning to cook a lovely pork side so that was a nice welcome back.

Scott and Lucy had booked yesterday (Monday) off work as well, so Scott and I took the opportunity to drive up to Myrtle Creek, where it was less smokey, for a quick round of golf. Lucy and Jo had a decadent lunch of cocktails and churros at the Haul.

Today (Tuesday), we're taking Braeden to his football practice (they bus them north to get away from the air quality here), then we'll head down to Medford and do our annual Harry and David's shop. Look out for some Moose Munch heading to the UK!

To close, here's a few more photos from Maui:

Friday morning we walked across the road to hit a few balls on the range at Kaanapali GC

I finished before Scott so could sit and admire!

Beach stroll Friday evening

View of the hills from our apartment

Aloha!

It's Friday afternoon here in Maui - but early Saturday morning back in the UK - and the Lesinas are doing their final packing before heading for the airport - they're on an overnight flight back to Oregon, via San Francisco, whereas Jo and I are not leaving until tomorrow (Saturday) morning for our flight back to Portland.

I haven't done a blog posting for over a week, but I've tried to keep the photo album up to date on Facebook, although there are a few unpublished ones I can use here.

First things first, however. Before we left Oregon, I paid my final visit to the dentist to get my crown fitted - and pay the bill - $2.5K in case you wondered. I'll start the fight with the insurance company when I get back. On Friday morning, Jo and I drove up to Portland and checked in to our overnight hotel, then called a Lyft (Uber "rival") to take us downtown to the Oregon Brewers' Festival. Nice location on the banks of the Columbia River and we had fun trying a few of the beers out - and some food too:

The following day's flight to Maui was OK - almost 6 hours long, but 3 hours of time difference "gained". We picked up our rental car - after the usual hassle - and drove over from the east side of the island to the west, where most of the big resorts are based. It's much drier on this side - the south east of the island in particular is much wetter - almost rain forest like - and yet the two coasts are less than an hour's drive apart at the narrow point of the island. I remember a similar experience when Jo, Kelly and I went to Kauai many years ago.

Day 1 (Sunday) in Hawaii we spent walking north along the beach to Black Rock, where rock jumping is the big thing. In the afternoon, we drove in to the nearest main town - Lahaina - and completed their various walking trails round this charming old town, including the Banyan Tree which takes over the whole of the village square:

You can only see a small part of the Banyan Tree - and already Jo's an expert on this strange growth and its air roots as she goes in to full teacher mode.

Day 2 (Monday) - Jo and I drove back over towards the east side of the island, stopping off at Iao Valley State Park, where we knew there were some scenic walks - and very nice they were too, despite the initial rather modest appearance:

Jo thought I only took this picture of her so I could get in the rather voluptuous young girl behind who was throwing poses as her partner kept photographing her.

The trail upstream became rather jungle-like.

No doubting this was the end of the trail.

After lunch at Marco's Italian restaurant, we took a short drive along to Kanaha Beach Park, where the wind was really blowing and the gaggle of windsurfers and kite surfers were having a ball:

Next stop was Maui Tropical Plantation, where we were initially slightly disappointed that the next two trolley tours were fully booked, but, in the end, we were quite happy just to take a walk around:

Lucy had booked a snorkel trip on Tuesday for all bar me - I'm not a good swimmer and have a bit of a fear of the ocean - so I was on my own for most of the day. What to do then? Initially, I thought of hiring a bike, so I headed down to the bike shop in Lahaina and spoke to the guy in charge there. It turns out I would need to hire the bike for a full day rather than a few hours - added to which there were no real trails nearby - I would have to cycle along the main coastal highway. No thanks.

I went back to our resort and dumped the car so I could walk to nearby Whaler's Village to pick up the bus service that would take me further north to Maui Brewing Co for a spot of lunch. By the time I got back, everyone had returned from their snorkelling trip and they seemed to have had a great time - especially judging by Lucy's photos.

I had a plan for Wednesday - a couple more trails for Jo and I to do. A few miles north is the Kapalua resort, another former plantation (ours is Kaanapali). Both have 2 high quality golf courses and umpteen hotel resorts. The first walk was short, but we should have taken note of its name - Cardio Loop. Yes, it was pretty hilly. Most of it was on former golf course buggy paths, but it wasn't too well signposted and there were lots of options on to other trails, so we got a bit lost and cut short our plans and headed for the next adventure along the Coastal Trail, which turned out to be really nice - especially at the rocky outcrop, where the wind nearly blew us in to the sea:

Walks over, we drove a couple of miles further to Honolua Bay, which was where everyone was snorkelling the day before:

The Lesinas had been at the luau at the Sheraton on Monday and had booked Jo and I in tonight. It was good fun - there was a ritual performed on distant Black Rock at sunset, and dancers and singers galore:

Thursday was time for Jo and I to head to the south east of the island to see the "other side". First stop was Twin Falls, which was mobbed, even at 10:30 am, so we didn't hang around long - a quick walk to the first falls, a few photos, then move on:

The next target - just 8 miles away - was the Garden of Eden, but little did we realise it would take us almost 40 minutes to get there along the narrow twisty road with lots of single track bridges. It was worth the effort, however. Lots of trails and viewpoints there:

We couldn't figure out what these strange blue fruits were.

So, the Lesinas are now on their way to the airport and Jo and I have been tasked with eating the remains of the various fridges etc in this 3 room villa - a tall order, I'll tell you!

We went out for a mid-morning breakfast today, after which Lucy took the boys to the store to stock up with foods for the journey, whilst Scott and I wandered over to the golf course and hit some balls on the range. Jo and I sat in the shade for a while and I jumped in the beautifully warm ocean for the last time this holiday.

That's the end of this massive missive.