foolfillment: the blog

A beach near Elphin, with Suilven, Cul Mor and Cul Beag in the distance (I think)

Your ideas not forthcoming, some answers : Triberg was the town we stayed in, it is the home of Germany’s highest waterfalls and we couldn’t get out of the train because the doors were (of course) locked.

We spent one night in Triberg then braved the trains again and made our way to Furtwangen where we found out that the bus we wanted to get didn’t run that day! Enough to make a man weep, but I didn’t though, I was just really grumpy untill we scrounged a lift from some nice lady who was in the tourist information office. Eventually we made it to Gasthaus Michelhof and set up camp for the next few days. After all our troubles with prison style trains and elusive youth hostels and disappearing buses we decided the best course of action was to not move untill we had somewhere firmly booked to go to. We read and did puzzles from the magnificent Puzzler magazine (an inspired purchase that kept us sane, I can naturally take the credit for buying that one) and were made comfortable by other overly generous campers.

Now, because nobody won last time, the prize rolls over. The person who answers this question correctly wins a romantic trip for two on the Paris Metro, what could be lovlier? That’s not the question by the way, this is: What is the correct response, when you are sitting eating cheese sandwiches with your girlfriend in a tent in Germany and a sweet old lady comes over to your tent, deposits EURO10, squeezes your girlfriend’s cheek says something beyond your comprehension of the german language and trots off back to the restaurant?

Well, I’ve moved back into my flat in Glasgow and I’m slowly doing all the boring tidying up that goes with it, this evening I braved opening all the bookmarked blogs that I spent so much of my time reading last year. It’s quite a daunting task, almost as if I’m a new reader, some sites have changed design, and all have too much new content to catch up on but I’m sure I’ll get back into the swing of it when I start back at uni next week. There will also no doubt be more tales of summer holiday adventure along with the chance to win more prizes.

Today though you get to hear of my jaunt in the hills. I was walking for about 5 hours and driving for about the same amount of time which is rubbish. Leaving my flat in Knightswood at 7 and arriving at Stuart and Dan’s flat in Shawlands an hour later did not bode well for a fun day, but still we pushed on and were on the hill (Ben Narnain, near Arrochar) by a quarter to ten.

I’ve been up this hill once before and then as today the intention was to carry on and claim Ben Ime as well but on both occasions one of my companions found the going a bit harder than they had expected and we ended up only getting to the the summit of Ben Narnain, not even popping up The Cobbler as we passed. Even still it was a lovely day and I have lots of photos to prove it. Here’s one of The Cobbler from the top of Ben Narnain

We took loads of rests and were off the hill almost exactly five hours after leaving the car, five hours walking to five hours driving - not the best balance.

is 14 years old

G reg, 1990, 1.3L Golf, around 77000 miles, from a local dealer for very little, insured for very little thanks to elephant.co.uk.

Does that satisfy all of your questions brother of mine?

All thanks to tesco.com

a view from my flat today

OK, it was me but here’s one along now.

And no, I’m not trying to distract myself from this rubbish

And why has my camera suddenly decided to start naming files from zero again?

before New Year’s Eve.

I’ll start with the view from my lounge at the moment:

While it looks good it may scupper any plans I’ve made, For instance Barney the dog might not want to go for a walk after I’ve posted this. I might not be able to drive up to Edinburgh to go climbing with big bruv tonight, though that’s unlikely. It is likely though that I won’t be able to drive across to Dumfries tomorrow to meet Morven and go out for Hogmanay. Which as I haven’t seen her since last Sunday would be a bit of a bugger.

In other news:
Christmas was good and fun, although very quiet this year compared to normal, only 5 and a baby compared to 10 last year. Lots of photos taken with Mum getting a digital camera, Lordy getting loads film and a new flash and me having my digital, I did manage to lose all of mine of course though by deciding it would be a good idea to back them up on my parents’ PC. sorry lordy, they’ve gone for good.

I did get a few photos yesterday though (which may at some point make it onto the photolog) when Dad and big bruv and me went up Ben Vorlich.

While Gordon had been wondering whether to write anything introspective about the year I had already come to the conclusion that he proposes at the end of his post, I can’t be bothered. (however when I write that sort of thing i usually end up doing it anyway and that may still be the case).

so that’s it, another year closes on my part of the web (even thought this was the first full year and that wasn’t even spent entirely in the same part of it) and with it I wish you a good Hogmanay, hope your plans are better prepared than mine. I’ll see you in 2004.

With no reason not to, Morven and I decided to spend the weekend on Mull. We travelled up on Friday by train to Oban and the Ferry across. On Saturday pretty much everywhere was closed but it was still a much better place to be than Glasgow and we wandered around Tobermory where we were staying. We finished it all off with a 21 mile cycle to Craignure on Sunday to catch the ferry back.

All in all, a really pleasant way to spend a weekend.

And I bet you’re all singing the Balamory song now aren’t you?

The first public appearance for Belle and Sebastian: