A Week In Review

Back from Scotland today. Took us seven and three quarter hours driving there last week but nine coming back today courtesy of the closure of M80 near Perth for road works.

Mind you last Saturday we did get up at 4.30am. Of course Son still hadn’t packed the few things that we’d asked him to, so that delayed us but we still got away by 6.00. Had breakfast in Carlisle.

We had a great cottage in a really quiet area. Doggo loved it. Daughter loved it. Son was nonplussed by it.

Well when I say Doggo loved it, he loved it apart from the fact that he couldn't go in the kitchen because the timer on the cooker beeped at him. He couldn't go in the lounge because the real fire spat sparks at him. He couldn't go in the conservatory because the heater in there blew hot air at him. He couldn't go in the bedroom because we shouted at him. Other than that he loved it.

Because Daughter slept in the lounge where the fire was, it was always a bonus to wake up with the house still intact around us.

Oh and our bed was very squeaky. What with the area being so quiet, the whole street could probably hear it and guess what we were up to. Very off putting. Had to stand up instead. Even tried it against the wardrobe. Far too wobbly, thought the whole thing was going to fall over. Next door had a different problem. They had very noisy stairs. Either they do a lot of going up and down them or perhaps they have a squeaky bed too and they’d found the stairs to be a better option.

The skiing was a little hit and miss because there wasn't much snow. We skied at The Lecht on Monday, which will be a really nice place if they had a decent dump of snow. Four runs and a nursery area were open when we went. This had been reduced to one run by the end of the week. The kids did approximately six (short) ski runs and then crashed in the coffee shop where they burned off £20 on hot chocolate and cake. We even took Doggo up on to the piste.

Cairngorm was better when we went there on Wednesday. Plenty of runs at the top on the Ptarmigan Bowl but they were packed with people. On the other side, The White Lady was good but only just skiable. I had to scramble through the rocks to complete it. The traverse run down on to the Cas and down to the Gun Barrel was the best, did that loads of times. Again by the end of the week the bottom of these runs had gone.

It was all good practice but with the lack of runs, it wasn't worth the money to ski any more days. It’s £21 for a half day at Cairngorm. So we had plenty of squeaky lie-ins and took Doggo loads of excellent walks in the woods instead. Threw hundreds of sticks over the week for Doggo, who looked progressively worse (e.g. more knackered) as the week went on. He is not a dog with stamina. For once though he was a dog with an appetite.

Tried all the local pubs. Nothing special about most of them but the Old Bridge Inn at Aviemore is worth a mention. The Cairngorm Wildcat 5.1% went down a storm. They’ve got a nice covered over outside area where we could take Doggo. We had a nice romantic beer in the rain there. This was about the only time it rained.

Son and Daughter only left the house the once. That was to ski with us on the Monday. They didn’t come to ski on Cairngorm. Their loss. The whole area was glorious, the scenery breathtaking. Every day we got back from our exploring to find that they hadn’t moved.

Daughter already had a heavy TV addiction before the holiday and the cottage provided her with a free upgrade to the really hard stuff. Sky TV. Now she's back home, she has to go cold turkey. It won't be pretty until she's totally off it. She's already requested it for her birthday.

Son and Daughter had an argument over Hollyoaks on Tuesday. Son never came out of his room again after that, only for meals. We cooked all our own meals. Only make one mistake. White Pudding. Don’t go there.

The only way we could distract Daughter from the TV in the evening was with increasingly painful games of Scrabble. So finally we played her at her own game and got our own back by having the TV on what we wanted to watch. Which was World Cup Track Cycling and eighties music. To be honest it wasn’t very good eighties music but it annoyed Daughter so it served its purpose.

Other than the skiing and the walking we didn’t do any fitness training other than a short run on our last day, so I’ll be fit for nothing now. Though L has been a bit rough all week. Her coughing and spluttering interrupted many a squeaky session. In the end she even had to take my advice and go for the Lockets.

Derby are missing me. They lost to a last minute goal at Sunderland today. A game apparently they should have won. This follows a home defeat to Stoke in midweek and defeat in the cup at Plymouth last Saturday. A bit of a wobble? Or maybe just too much squad rotation Mr Davies? Resting players is all very well but when the replacements haven't played much football (and we haven't a reserve team) you can't expect them to perform as well. Predictably Plymouth got the cup draw we would have wanted, home to Watford. Yep this really was our year! Oh well. Good luck to the Pilgrims.

When we got home we fobbed the kids off with chips while L and I dumped them and Doggo to head off into town to top up our alcohol levels. Had some very nice 5.0% IPA, 2 pints of. Then we had a curry in the Mogul for the first time in almost a decade. They had some very different dishes. I had an Albi, which had potatoes in it. Not bad. Nice sauce, not enough potato. Keema naan quite good. Mushroom rice good too. L's was better as usual; the dish she chose had huge garlic gloves in it. Had a Singapore Tiger with it.

Then we popped in Scruffys for a Dark Leffe.