Ben Challum

Hired a car and headed off to a munro just North of Crianlarich. This is officially one of the wettest places in the country which explains why it has been so hard to spot good weather windows in this part of the world.

The weather was good as expected at the start with a pleasant walk up the hill on fairly pleasant terrain and after the first steep climb a section with a bit of a path leading to the top. It was extremely windy at the summit and the weather started to turn just after I reached it. Any thoughts of extending the walk to 3 hills were quickly dropped with the weather and the potential route looking daunting.

Once off the top the conditions weren't too bad and it was even getting warm and sunny again by the time I reached the bottom.

Tour of Tweeddale

50 mile cycle ride from Peebles. Good strong effort getting round the course in 3 hrs and 5 minutes of cycling. 2 cake and soup stops en route.

Walk to Corstorphine Walled Garden

A very short walk with Les from his house to the very pleasant nearby walled garden.

Oldhamstocks Flower Show and Hill Race

Cherry and Colin headed out to the small village of Oldhamstocks inland from Dunbar.

Colin ran in the 4 mile hill race. As hill races go it is a pretty gentle affair with only a very modest climb and generally pretty good surface under foot the whole way. Very pleasant running. Got round in about 37 minutes and finished in reasonably good shape.

Afterwards we enjoyed the show with exhibits of fruit and veg and a number of stalls for local goods and crafts. A very pleasant rural event.

Festival

On Thursday night Cherry and Colin headed down to Musselburgh to see Dougie MacLean at the Brunton Theatre. We've seen Dougie quite a few times and he always puts on a nice show. The set and the sing alongs are becoming a little bit too familiar though.

On Sunday the four of us went to see John Hegley. A bit like Dougie he was pretty good but what may have been new and innovative 25 years ago was fun but not that exciting. More sing-a-longs in this show as well.

Cherry and Colin went along to see a Virtual Reality (mixed with some live performance) at CodeBase. We tried on our Google VR masks which had a Samsung Galaxy phone placed in the eyeset to provide the VR experience. I have to say the technology was pretty unimpressive with a fairly pixelated display and nothing in the show that was particularly interesting to look at.

A quick dinner at Petit Paris on the Grassmarket on the way home.

Beinn Chabhair

I had one remaining Crianlarich munro to complete and planned a long day out to get there.

A start at Strathyre was followed by a 13 miles cycle ride along quiet roads then landrover tracks in the later parts. Good weather, two lakes and lovely valley made for a very pleasant ride.

The climb to the munro summit felt tough. I guess I was pretty quick up but the legs weren't in great form for the latter parts of the climb. The route down was pretty grotty as well. This was very much the rarely taken back route into the hill.

A nice ride back to the start made for a good 5 and a half hours of exercise and another munro ticked off.

Northern Ireland

A nice trip to Bangor to visit Maxwell and Liz. Flew over on Thursday lunchtime and had lunch at Liz's in Groomsport before going for a walk along the shore.

Dinner in the evening at the Wheathill on Grays Hill.

On Friday we had a visit to Titanic and then dinner out at the Old Inn Groomsport.

Flight home on Saturday morning.