370: Boys will be boys or, the Lairig Ghru

My friend Aliisdair last walked the Lairig Ghru, a 20 mile pass through the highlands of Scotland, more than 50 years ago - when he was a young soldier. It was in the middle of winter and the whole route was covered in snow. He is planning to walk it again, (but not in the snow!) perhaps raising some money for charity along the way, and yesterday I helped with the first recce. We walked for almost 6 hours and covered almost 13 miles. Today the legs are a tad wobbly.

On the way back, to avoid getting bored coming back the same way as we went out, we decided, on the toss of a coin, to try a different route. All was going well until we came to a river with no obvious way of crossing it and staying dry. We followed its course a few hundred yards and found this "footbridge". I suppose that when we were younger we might have boldly strolled across, like tightrope walkers, using our arms to balance ourselves. But these days caution prevails and we sat on the tree trunk and inched our way across.

And a song to finish? What could be more appropriate than "river deep and mountain high"!

369: the goose drank wine

Sorry I haven't written for a while - where does the time go? If there are any quantum physicists reading this, please feel free to enlighten me.

I'm in Golspie this week after an uneventful KLM flight from Warsaw to Edinburgh via Amsterdam  on Saturday. Strangely, it was the same crew on the 2nd leg.  I hired a car from Edinburgh airport to drive the last 220 miles North.

This morning I made my annual pilgrimage  to "The Mannie". Here are a couple of pictures to record the event for posterity.

From the bottom looking up:

From the top looking up:

From the top looking down:

From the top looking down: (it's past time to get some sun on those legs!)

And now a song to tie in with the 369th blog:

368: Bleeding weather!

The Oxford online dictionary suggests that bleeding is an adjective used for emphasis or to express annoyance. It further suggests that it is British informal. My own interpretation is that it is also one of the lowest levels of profanity. I used it in the title firstly to express annoyance that the weather has been so bad this week - my planned sail on Rutland water was cancelled because of strong winds. (I know you need wind to go sailling but not such a strong wind in such a small boat. I took advice from the Commodore of the club, who is a lot more experienced in these matters than I am.)

I also used the bleeding word to lead on to my reason for writing today. Instead of going sailing, and inspired by my friend Gwen, I went to Cambridge to give blood. My 55th pint, or 56th, if you count the pint I donated in Scotland in a rare moment of generosity. When the bleeding weather is cold the blood flows much more slowly but yesterday was fine. I was off the reclining bed/chair and on to the tea and biscuits in very short order. 

Cambridge is one of my favourite cities and here are a few of the pictures I took trying to capture "the Britishness" of the place. 

1) St John's college, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, established by charter in 1511!

2) Bikes. There are thousands leaning against every available railing in the city. Here you can also see some of the plethora of handbills advertising what's on in  the city.

3) Some church or other, just off the market square. Too idle to do my research and find out which church it is. There are many of them in Cambridge, of many different faiths.

4)  A Salvation Army stalwart. What could be more British? Founded in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth it is a Christian church and international charitable organisation structured in a quasi-military fashion. Their members can often be seen on the streets with their collecting tins, raising money for worthwhile causes.

5)  A 'busker', or street musician. I know nothing about music, having always thought that a key was something you opened the door with and pitch was something you put on the road, but I sometimes like to stop and listen. I think he was a tenor. I put some money in his collecting box - needless to say, it wasn't a tenner - and stopped for a few minutes while I ate my hot dog for lunch, procured from a nearby street vendor.

6)  Now that Spring has sprung flowers are everywhere. These are looking a bit bedraggled from the recent heavy rain but still beautiful nevertheless. Cambridge has many parks and gardens where, when the sun shines, it is quite pleasant to perambulate. 

 

367: In the mountains

I'm in the Tatra mountains, in the South of Poland. Marvellous scenery and fresh mountain air. I arrived late on Thursday evening after spending 2 hours in crawling traffic during the Krakow evening rush hour. Once we'd cleared Krakow the bus was able to make better speed and I reached the hotel at 8.40. They stopped serving dinner at 9.00 so I was lucky enough to be able to squeeze in a meal before retiring for the night and sleeping like a log.
Yesterday was spent doing touristy stuff in the towns of Zakopane and then Gubawovka, via a funicular railway. Back to the hotel to use the swimming pool, jaccuzi, and sauna. And bar, of course.
Today I was a bit more adventurous and went to a lake in the mountains called Morskoe Oko. It is about 20 km from Zakopane and once the bus drops you off there is still 9m km to walk - all of it upwards. Stunning scenery. The lake is still frozen. And then 9 km back down again. My legs are like jelly - just wait until tomorrow. Ready for a beer - or two.

366: The Rod Stewart blog

Why Rod Stewart? Because I'm going to write about "sailing" and about "Maggie's" and they are two of his songs. I'm about to finish a week in UK and a very busy week it has been too. On Tuesday  I went to London to meet my sister  for lunch. Both trains, there and back, were cancelled. Such is life. We went to Maggie's cafe in Lewisham. An Irish cafe where the portions are enormous. The picture here was taken when I'd already been eating for half an hour. Maybe I exaggerate a tiny bit. The second photo is of a picture hanging in their toilet. I promise not to make a habit of taking pictures in toilets.

The caption says "the more I think the more confused I get". I can relate to that. (Or, sometimes, the more I  drink  the more confused I get.)

A large part of Wednesday was spent with daughter and her two sons and, as usual, after that I needed the day to recover. So Thursday was a quiet day, quiet for me that is: I made an abortive attempt to change a tap washer - the housing has been in place for in excess of 35 years so I'm not really surprised it didn't want to separate from the tap - and then had a run/walk into town.

Today, however, I went sailing. I haven't been sailing since Zavidovo (100 miles N of Mosccow on the Leningradka) in the late seventies and then  it was in small one-man laser & mirror dinghies. Today's craft was a larger affair - a 19 foot keel boat. I liked that it  was a keel boat as the keel makes it much less likely to capsize. There was me, as a passenger, and two 'proper' sailors. I was properly initiated by being invited to go for'ard (see how easily the nautical jargon rolls off the tongue), thereby catching all the spray whenever we went faster and the boat was leaning over at an alarming (for me  at any rate) angle. At least it saved the real crew from getting wet. Almost 3 hours sailing, tacking and gybing (more jargon), around Rutland water. I learnt not to have a flappy jib and to keep an eye on the tell-tales! All in all great fun. Here are a few of the pictures.

Where did you get that 'at, where did you get that 'at...
	Time for prayers!

And, just to finish, 2 video clips  from Rod Stewart

365: Food or fitness

Where on earth I found the will-power to go out for a run this morning I will never know but I found it somewhere and I'm now back home and waiting for my breathing to settle back to normal. I think I was trying to figure out a logical pattern for the day after my Skype lesson 0700-0800 turned out to be a no-show. Did you know that for Skype lessons only the top half of the body needs to be dressed. (But for God's sake remember not to stand up.) :).

Bruce Tulloh's zero to hero chart that I showed in my last blog is OK for the younger man, or woman, but I don't think it's quite as good for the more senior plodder like me. It suggests that at the end of week 1, having run for 1 minute and walked for 90 seconds and repeated that 8 times, then it is all right for the next week to run for 2 minutes and walk for 1. Thanks for the suggestion but I don't think so. You're changing both variables at the same time. I found that running for 1 minute and then walking for 1 minute repeated 10 times is a much more suitable transition and more suited to an unfit person like me.

Back to the main reason for running - my predilection for food and drink. Living on my own for most of the time, what and where I eat and drink is down to me. Since I started teaching, back in 2008, I've slowly got the hang of this cooking 'business' and, when I have time, I like to 'dabble'. Here is a picture of yesterday's lasagne. Yes, I know it could almost feed the five thousand but that's what freezers are for.

During the week I sometimes call in for a big boy's breakfast at Galeria Wypiekow. They do a very nice breakfast (three fried eggs, with ham, cheese, tomato and a couple of rolls and butter thrown in for good measure). No wonder I have to run to burn off these calories. I was there last Thursday and impressed by their Easter decorations.

Last night I was motivated by WWF's "Earth hour" to turn off my computer, and indeed all electrical devices (apart from the fridge/freezer), half an hour earlier than usual in a forlorn bid to help save the planet. I do realize, of course, that such a gesture can only succeed if everybody does it and the chance of that happening can be expressed as a round number. Who remembers the exhortation "if we each save a little, we'll all save a lot". I suppose the opposite would be "if only a few of us save a little, it won't make a blind bit of difference".

The breathing has returned to normal. Time to shower, and dress both halves of the body, before Dorota arrives for her English lesson and finds me inappropriately clad. Enjoy the rest of Palm Sunday. Here is a picture of the painting by Pietro Lorenzetti entitled "The entry of Christ into Jerusalem"

                      

            

364: Spring has sprung

According to the latest issue of SAGA (Sex Annually, Generally August) magazine there are three dates that are used to suggest Spring has arrived. The first is meteorological spring, based on temperatures. That is 1st March. Then there is the more familiar astronomical spring: this year March 20th is the day the earth's tilt on its axis is neither towards nor away from the sun. Thirdly, Solar seasons are based on how much sunlight there is: the first day of solar spring was February 1st. 

I would like to contribute a fourth: the day I put on my running shoes after the winter! Today, to coincide with a rare morning off, I donned running shoes (and various other items of clobber) and ventured out onto Warsaw's streets. My last run was on 31st October so it was back to the very beginning of this fitness chart. I very much doubt that I will be at 30 minutes running, no walking, after 8 weeks but surely I'll be a few steps nearer returning to a reasonable level of fitness.

 I was in London a couple of weeks back and, to ring the changes, I decided to use the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) for part of my trip. This is a modern, driver-less, system that runs on rails to many parts of East London. Here are a few of the pictures I took on my journey from Lewisham to Bank.

What else has been happening. Not very much. 16 lessons this week - meeting myself coming back. Would have been 17 but yesterday evening's lesson was cancelled. Thankfully I shall still get paid for it as if it had taken place. I plan to take some time off on Saturday and go to see the new action film London has fallen. What a bonus that many foreign films here are shown in the original language with subtitles in Polish. The other bonus is that I get a concessionary rate by virtue of being (a little bit) old.

To finish, naturally enough, the Spencer Davis group singing "Keep on Running" from 1965.