Lesley and I have just returned from a week’s holiday in the South of France, to Roussillon (the Catalan region of France). We flew from Edinburgh to Toulouse with Jet2, who are a budget airline but the flight was fine.
Last week I went on a 2-day expedition into Letterewe (also known as Fisherfield). This area of Wester Ross in north-west Scotland is one of the most wild and remote areas of the Highlands and it contains 6 munro summits. These munro summits are considered to be amongst the most remote and inaccessible of any. I had been wanting to do a major walk here for years but had never had the opportunity before.
Two weeks ago I walked up Ben Wyvis near Inverness with Lee, an old friend from school. We had a fantastic warm day for it, with perfectly blue skies. The top of Ben Wyvis is a long, broad and grassy ridge that makes for great walking. With the clear air we had that day it was like walking along a balcony with a view of the whole Scottish Highlands.
Two weeks ago I travelled to Lochgoilhead to walk to the 779m Corbett summit of Beinn Bheula.
Two weeks ago I went for a short walk in the Pentland Hills, near where I live in Edinburgh. I walked up Hare Hill to look for the remains of a German Junkers Ju-88 bomber that crashed here during a raid on Edinburgh during World War Two in 1943. All four crew were killed in this crash, and I had read that there were still significant wreckage remains at the site.
Yesterday I went for a long trip (about 36km round-trip) along the length of Glen Feshie in the Cairngorms. From Tolvah I cycled along the good tarmac road to Carnachuin (great views of Carn Ban Mor and Coire Garbhlach), crossed a bridge over the river Feshie (which looks like it might fall down very soon), and then into the upper glen which becomes a steep-sided gorge.
Last weekend Lesley and I went to Strathpeffer in Easter Ross, staying at the Ben Wyvis Hotel (which I can’t really recommend; it’s large, spooky, very old-fashioned and reminds me of the hotel in The Shining). You can see Ben Wyvis from the hotel, but the view from our room was of another wall of the hotel and anyway the summit of Ben Wyvis was shrouded in clouds the whole time we were there .
I spent last weekend walking in Glen Shiel and did 4 Munro summits; Sgurr nan Conbhairean and Carn Ghlusaid on the Saturday and Creag a’Mhaim and Druim Shionnach on the Sunday. The latter are at the eastern end of the South Glen Shiel ridge which I walked on previously in 1996, but inexplicably I missed out the summit of Creag a’Mhaim that time so this was a new summit for me.
On Saturday last weekend I walked to the 841m summit of Ben Vrackie near Pitlochry. It was a perfect winter day for hillwaking with still air and crisp clear skies. The temperature was -6C at my car as I started the walk, and there was snow all the way, deepening considerably as I got higher (although crampons and ice-axe were never needed).
I’ve just finished reading two interesting books about the modern Internet and where it’s going. They are:
- ‘The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand’ by Chris Anderson
- ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything’ by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive