From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Hello again. Ross came home for a couple of days' trial on Wednesday and returned to hospital this morning and got his discharge OK. Right now, he and Jo are in B & Q buying paint for the downstairs room, which is being turned in to a playroom/workshop, with Ross sleeping upstairs in what Jo calls "the yellow room". The new floor covering has yet to be agreed on - Ross suggested wood or carpet tiles, but this didn't meet with his Mum's approval, and I think she's set on getting a new carpet down - it is, after all, the oldest carpet in the house, dating back to Lucy's days down there.

Some of you may know that I almost got my wish of part owning the local brewery, which was up for sale, but I've been thwarted by a rival local consortium it seems. Never mind - as long as it survives, that's the main thing.

I got surprised last week with a call from a Tony Lang from Australia. He was the guy quoted in the letter in my last blog posting. As he spoke about some of the incidents mentioned in Renshaw's Chronicles, it began to come back to me - he was our Scout Leader when I went on my first Scout summer camp to Arran half a century ago. Tony told me he had photos of that trip and also other ones, like Arundel, that I went on. He's hoping to digitise these and send them to me somehow - can't wait.

If you didn't view it on Facebook, here's the link to the old Deeside Railway that closed under the 1963 Beeching cuts in 1966 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wj14gyYDLEY#!. Where would we be living now if the line hadn't closed?

R.i.P. Dad

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Hard to believe it was 2 years ago today that Dad passed - he would have been approaching 91 by now.

Received an unusual letter last week:

Unfortunately, I don't know - or can't remember - Tony Lang - nor Bill McKinnon for that matter. I wrote back, but I think he's got the wrong person - Tony Lang is over 7 years older than me - he can't have known me at school.

Although our weekend in the Lake District was truncated, at least we got to see Mary and Brian on Friday night - we went out for a curry with them:

Not a terribly good one of Mary

but a better one of Brian

We had a nice walk round both Keswick and Bowness on Windermere on Saturday, taking in a bit of Derwent Water and Windermere. We then decided to drive back to Whitbarrow Village via Ullswater, and came across the famous old Kirkstyle Pass Inn, where we stopped for a half:

Kelly Skyped yesterday - complete with blond hair and pink streaks!

I'm in the office this morning, but I'm meeting up with Ross and Jo - and Gary - at http://www.nhsgrampian.org/nhsgrampian/gra_display_hospital.jsp?p_applic=CCC&pContentID=407&p_service=Content.show& at noon.

York weekend

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well, we certainly got the timing right, heading south to the scorching temperatures in York whilst a wet weather front invaded most of Scotland and broke our brief Indian summer.

The train journey down was uneventful, apart from a group of 4 "girls" (30 +) giggling louder and louder as their wine consumption increased. It even prompted our nearest travelling companion - a 28 year old girl - to comment, saying that, although she was still young - inferring obviously that we were not - she thought they were a bit out of order.

Normally we would have used Club 55 and our Senior Rail passes to travel first class, but it wasn't available at the times we wanted, so we were in one of the main coaches from Stonehaven to Edinburgh. The connection to York was a lot better - we were in the quiet coach there.

Our hotel was just a short stroll from the station and just outside the city wall. We went for a walk to orientate ourselves - but stopped for a few refreshments on the way. Before we knew it, time was marching on and, suddenly, all the restaurants were filling up and we couldn't get in anywhere we fancied. We ended up walking back almost to where we had set off and we managed to find an Indian restaurant - http://www.saffrondesi.com/ - that could take us. They made a feature of the way they served naan bread:

 We had a plan of campaign for Saturday morning - we would make sure we were amongst the first to arrive at the Jorvik Centre (http://www.jorvik-viking-centre.co.uk/) - one of the top tourist attractions in York. We spent a while there - they even have a Disney-style ride - then we walked on, looking for a nice outdoor tea room to enjoy the warm sun. We found the Early Grey Tea Rooms in Shambles, and it had a lovely garden to the rear:

Everyone was out and about enjoying the unexpected October heatwave - there were even a few buskers who'd wheeled out their upright piano's in to the street to entertain us:

Next stop was the must-do Minster. We joined a group and the guide made it more interesting than I imagined it was possible to do - but an hour and a half in there was enough - let's get out in the sun again - so we walked across town to the York Brewery - we knew there was a tour there at 3:30 pm and we didn't want to miss it. When I say "tour", there's not really any walking involved - it's little more than a microbrewery, so it's really a more of a talk on the brewing process - plus a couple of pints of course!

From there we walked down to the park and the riverside - the Ouse we think, not the Foss, which is the other main river that runs through the city. We sat on the riverbank and read our books and people-watched for a while. After that, we took a short stroll along the city wall back to our hotel to shower and change prior to going out for dinner.

Again, we had no masterplan for the evening - other than to make sure we didn't leave it as late as the previous night. We got lucky this time and found the Waterfront - a nice Steak and Seafood restaurant on King's Staith on the river Ouse:

Apart from a short walk and another beer, that was it for Saturday.

Sunday morning was a little cloudier and cooler than it had been on Friday and Saturday, but it was still fine enough for our planned circuit of the city walls. Our first stop on the circular tour was at Cliffords Tower (http://www.cliffordstower.com/), adjacent to York Castle:

We entered and paid our admission money - it seems nothing is free in York - and climbed to the top of the tower, listening to the podcast and taking in the views, whilst carefully minding our step on the narrow walkway. Normally you grow out of childhood fears, but both Jo and I are feeling the effects of vertigo more and more as we get older. Check this short video, by way of example - note Jo hanging on to the rail:

We continued our walk - there were bits of the wall missing and it meant walking along the road/pavement:

The scene looks tranquil, but what you can't see is the adjacent dual carriageway, with traffic roaring by!

We eventually got nearer York Minster again and there were some nice views of it from the wall walk:

It was nearing lunchtime and there was yet another nice walled garden pub, backing on to the city wall, so we stopped off for a beer, before heading for our train home:

The return journey was fine for us, even although we had to bus from Berwick to Edinburgh and then had a bit of a scrum to get seats on the Edinburgh - Stonehaven train, as they had grossly underestimated the numbers likely to catch it - it was absolutely mobbed.

Thankfully, my car - which was parked in an identical location to the previous weekend when a woman had reversed into it, was untouched this time.

Lovely weekend.

Catch up

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

This must be the longest ever period between blog postings - two weeks! I have updated all my other blogs, however, so it's not as if I have been ignoring Blogspot.

What have I been up to in that time? Well - the other blogs will tell you in detail, so I'm not going over any of the hill-walking, golf or ale adventures etc., but the last couple of weekends have been pretty hectic - particularly the weekend in the Lake District. Funnily enough, Jo and I are going back there next weekend - 8th/9th. I had booked a week's timeshare for Gary, Carole and Luca for the first week of the school October holidays. They are heading down to England to see Carole's family in Lincoln and Gary had asked if I could get them some accommodation "anywhere in Englandshire" that week.

Well, I managed to book a week at http://www.seasonsholidays.com/whitbarrowvillage/index.html - not exactly handy for Lincoln, but certainly a bit closer than Inverurie. Gary and Carole are now going to stay in a hotel in Lincoln on Saturday/Sunday and then move in to the Lake District on Monday, so that meant there are 2 nights free there. As it happens, Jo's going down to see Mary next Wednesday, and was planning to come back on Saturday, so I thought I could drive down there on Friday, stay with Mary and Brian, then the two of us could go off to the resort for a couple of days and come back up the road on Monday morning, before Gary, Carole and Luca arrive.

Before that, however, Jo and I are off to York for 2 nights this Friday - and the weather forecast looks great.

That's about it for now - will promise not to take so long before my next posting.

Hello again

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well here I am, on the eve of my trip south to the Lake District for our walking weekend, exactly a year after our little WHW adventure, and still I don't know how I'm getting there or back. I had originally  planned to drive down tomorrow afternoon and take Colin Kilgour with me - and I would then have company and we could also share the driving. The others - Dave Williamson, Ken Black and Ian Sharp - have all made their arrangements and none of them are really convenient - although I could conceivably still go down with Dave and Ken, and then come back by train (and bus).

Colin's wife, Johanne, is back in hospital today - hopefully temporarily - having the implant that controls the drugs that control her Parkinson's moved again. It's unlikely that Colin will be able to join us now, so Plan B for me will be to catch the train (and bus) there and back - but I have to wait until Colin actually says he can't come - which he hasn't yet.

What else has happened in the last week? A bit of golf - Friday at Aboyne, Sunday at Banchory, yesterday at Gleneagles - the latter was the windiest conditions I've ever played in - it was unplayable at times, but it was a corporate invite and it would have been rude to quit. We managed round in the end, but it was a struggle - hope it's not as bad when we're walking this weekend - although the forecast is pretty poor.

Saturday afternoon was the first visit for a few years of the Aberdeen, Grampian & Northern Isles CAMRA branch to Banchory for their monthly meeting. A couple of pints during the two and a half hour meeting, followed by one at the Burnett, then another at the Douglas, then off we - and they - toddled. See Ian's Ale Adventures blog for photos etc.

That's about it. Next blog to be updated will most likely be the Hill-walking one.

Cheers,

Ian

Ross' cake

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Forgot to show the cake that Jo baked:

No - we haven't eaten half of it - it's one cake doubled up!

Ross 28!

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes - hard to believe, but Ross is 28 today. He was born in Edinburgh just after Fischer Ultrasound closed their factory in Edinburgh. Strange to think we were offered a move over to Denver, but it didn't feel right at the time and so we then moved up to Aberdeen instead. I wonder if I had taken the job and we had moved over, whether Lucy and Kelly would have remained a bit closer geographically?

What else has been happening this last week or so? Well, midweek golf is now officially over - the last night of our 23 week long midweek Quaich tournament was last Wednesday - and I won it this year - for the first time since 1995 - the oldest ever winner of the Quaich.

We also held the Terry Edmonds' Memorial at Aboyne on Friday - it's over 10 years since Terry died. The weekend that followed was our biannual trip to Boat of Garten, so the golf season is definitely winding down.

Next weekend 5 of us are going on a walking trip to the Lake District - exactly a year after our WHW weekend - and last night I made a provisional booking for the weekend in York that Jo and I have always talked about. It's at the very end of this month - hopefully before the weather turns too bad.

That's about all for now - the rest is fairly routine, although the local CAMRA branch is holding its meeting in Banchory on Saturday afternoon, so I guess I'll toddle along to that.

Sad start to the week

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yes - it was Syd's wife's funeral this morning. Good turnout from friends from Banchory and Torphins. Syd did everything himself. He said Barbara was a very private person and they had discussed funeral arrangements before. Barbara didn't want anybody she didn't know involved in the arrangements, so there was no minister - Syd himself gave the eulogy and pressed all the buttons to put on the music, draw back the curtains etc - there was no staff to be seen anywhere.

Their 3 sons travelled in from their homes in London, Spain and Switzerland, and each did a little speech about their mother. Different.

So I've just about recovered my sleep pattern now - and I managed to get a couple of games of golf at the weekend too, but it's really noticeable how dark the evenings are becoming. In fact, this Wednesday is the last of our midweek golf this year - how sad. I guess we came back from holiday a little later this year. It's Boat of Garten this weekend - Syd, as the winner in May, was supposed to be organising, but he asked me to take over a few weeks ago, so I'm doing it all now.

Almost a month of eating and drinking in USA hasn't done wonders for my fitness - I've struggled on the latter parts of the rounds of golf I've played since I came back - and it's only a couple of weeks now until our walking trip to the Lake District. I do hope the climbs there aren't as steep as some of those on the West Highland Way that we did at this time last year. It's over a month since the last of our preparation/training walks - and that was a fairly sedate one up Glentanar - so I'm not really in shape for 3-4 days of hard walking.

We missed the Edinburgh Fringe this year as well - pity.

It's probably about time to start looking at flights to USA next year as well. Of course, we've got a few trips before then - notably Oz, and also Macdonald Forest Hills in January - but we've also promised ourselves trips to Bath and York some time - need to plan those in soon.

So that's about it now. I'll finish with last week's Graze Box:

Not sure how long I'll carry on with them - was a bit of a novelty.

Etc

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well, it was 4:30 am before I woke this morning - it's progressing by half an hour each day - but I had to stay awake until 11:30 pm to be able to do this. It's a slow process re-adjusting the body clock - after almost a month of an 8 hour time difference, you get very used to West Coast USA time. You would think therefore that I should now be fast asleep, as it's just after midnight at Lucy's, but it seems to have the opposite effect to what you expect. And I've got a cold.

Played golf last night at Banchory - first time walking 18 holes since mid July - but I don't feel too sore today. Going to try squash doubles after work today - need the exercise badly. Gary and Luca are coming to Fraserburgh at lunchtime today - Luca's only at school mornings this week and Gary's taking the afternoons off to look after him. Apparently, Luca's got a fish obsession just now so he wants to see round one of our factories!

Ross has got a new part-time job at one of the local coffee shops - Tease - it'll supplement his income from his business, which has been slow recently, and he's going to get some training to be a Barista apparently!


To finish for today, here's the video of Jo operating the automatic roof - you'll note the cameraman this time didn't leave any fingers, scarves or purses showing!:

Top down, top up

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Back at my desk this morning - first time in long trousers and a tie for almost a month. We managed to stay awake until 9 pm last night, but I was awake again at 3:30 am this morning - jet-lag and the time difference do funny things to you. I've been in the office for several hours already - but don't think I'll still be here at 5 pm tonight!

The day has started on a very sad note - not only did we hear about the deaths of famous songwriters Jerry Leiber (Hound Dog etc) and Nick Ashford (half of Ashford & Simpson), but, much more close to home, my pal Syd's wife Barbara died yesterday. She'd been in hospital in a coma after they discovered an inoperable brain tumour a few weeks ago. They'd been married for over 50 years.

Moving on, here's one of the "missing" videos of the convertible:

End of hols

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

I'm sitting here at LAX in the BA lounge, waiting for our return flight to the UK. Very nice here - and, of course, everything's free.

We went back to the Rusty Pelican last night for dinner - we had gone there almost 18 months ago for Jo's birthday - and it was very nice. I did remember to take an end-of-term team photo outside our apartment last night before we went out:

Dinner on Saturday was a whole lot better experience than Friday night, when we'd walked all round Corona del Mar looking for a restaurant that would take the 6 of us - the best we could get was a 75 minute wait - it was all a bit much for poor wee Braeden, who fell asleep and had to be carried back to the car by his Dad.

Braeden has been a little bit under the weather all week - nothing bad, just not his usual boisterous self. Cade, on the other hand, has been on a high - especially when he's out in the waves, as we were again yesterday at Huntington Beach - aka Surf City USA.

This morning, the Lesinas were up and gone by 3:45 am. We tried to have a lie in, but didn't really succeed. We had a leisurely morning, packing, then taking a slow drive up to LAX on the Pacific Coast Highway. We stopped for coffee at Joe's Crab Shack at a marina at the south end of Long Beach. There I demonstrated the roof coming up on our convertible:

As you'll notice, it was filmed by Jo - note accidental artistic addition.

Whoops - flight has now been called - upload speed slow in lounge - will have to do later - sorry!

Surfing USA

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Our room has a giant bath - Braeden made good use of it the other day:

We had dinner at the Steelhead brewpub in Irvine on Monday:

Yesterday on the beach:

Now for the videos:

From Grants Pass to Newport Coast

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Well, it's been a few days since I've managed to find the time to update my blog. Things are a bit more hectic down here in Southern California - although the resort is as lovely as we all remember it.

Of course, prior to that, Jo and I had spent all day Saturday in Medford after the Lesinas dropped us off at our hotel. We shopped a bit, drank a bit, ate a bit, walked a fair deal and managed a quick swim in the pool. Lunch was again at our favourite pizza pub, Kaleidoscope and we sat in the outdoors area, with the misters working full blast to keep us all cool - you can see them in this photo:

Our flight to LA was early Sunday morning, but it was just a short stroll from our hotel to the terminal building and everything went well and we got to LAX in good time. We tried to find Lost/Found Property - we call it the former, the Americans the latter - and I suspect their terminology is technically more correct - but failed. Jo had managed to leave her coat in the airport terminal when we were there 2 weeks ago. This is the replacement coat for the one she did the identical thing with in Australia earlier this year! It seems this coat is fated to be lost forever.

Our hire car is a Sebring convertible - and it has a wonderful action to get the hood down - just press a button and it all happens - magical! We drove down the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down and the wind blowing our hair - well, Jo's anyway! We arrived at our resort early and the Lesinas pulled up an hour or so later, having broken the back of the journey on Saturday.

On Monday morning, Scott, Cade and I went to have 9 holes of golf at the lovely little course at Aliso Creek - it's cut in a canyon and there's trouble all round - including rattlesnakes! Cade hit a career best drive off  the first tee - much better than Scott and I.

Monday afternoon was down to the beach - and everyone got in to the ocean. Cade and Braeden had skim boards, but they seemed to bore of them fairly quickly. Here's the Lesinas:

A lovely day - and Tuesday was better, but it was an early-ish start for the short drive to the original Disneyland resort. There are 2 theme parks there - Magic Kingdom and California Adventure - we did them both in a mammoth day. Cade and Braeden enjoyed the zip slide in the latter, as evidenced by this short video:

Naturally, Wednesday was a quieter day, but it was back to golf and beach again on Thursday - more photos and videos to follow.

GP update

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

So what have we done since Monday? Wish I could remember - that's why I take photographs - otherwise I really wouldn't have a clue at times. It seems easier to remember 40 + years ago than 4 days ago.

I think Tuesday was just another day of rest - we didn't go anywhere. I arranged golf at Grants Pass on Wednesday afternoon - played with a Glaswegian from Vancouver and his son. He left Scotland when he was 8 and has only been back once - mind you, his family came from Castlemilk and the Gorbals and the shock of going there put him off returning! He flattered me somewhat when we were swapping tales of injuries - his back, my knees - and moaning about the effect it was having on our golf. I added that age wasn't helping and he said to me - "we're about the same age, aren't we? I'll be 50 next birthday". Treasure that one, Ian!

Jo and I drove down to Medford in the morning and did some shopping - Harry and David's (http://www.harryanddavid.com/gifts/store/home___) had to be done after all! In the evening, when the Lesinas went off to football conditioning, Jo and I took Holly for a walk round the local park - well, mostly Jo, actually:

I stayed at Delsie Drive on Thursday and looked after the boys as Jo and Lucy went for a long walk, then a bit of shopping. Scott was home early and we ate before the boys went to football. Afterwards, Scott lit the fire at the back of the garden and we had toasted marshmallows and 'Smores (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%27more) - lovely!:

I'd seen some tins of locally brewed beer in Harry and David's and thought Scott might like them:

Fearless Scottish Ale!

Scott's off work today (Friday) and we'd originally planned to take Cade golfing again - after Scott had the car oil changed. He thought it would take an hour or so and left the house at 7 am, but it's almost 11 am now and he's still not back, so he's obviously had some problems. Perhaps we won't have time for golf after all.

We're going to watch the boys train tonight and tomorrow the Lesinas head off on the long drive to Southern California. They'll drop us off in Medford and we'll spend the day and night there then fly off on Sunday morning and meet them at Newport Coast.