Quite a fun weekend - robert, 12/06/2006, 12:07
This morning a sequence of events occurred which made me wonder if there's a man upstairs controlling the world entirely for shits and giggles. Everything was fine this morning, on time, no problem - until, that is, I was most of the way to work. Splat. A gull obviously thought it would be highly amusing to shit on my right shoulder. I was not best pleased. I was even less pleased when I walked in the gates to work and D-Ream's "Things Can Only Get Better" started to play. It's not the first time my iriver has decided to play this after some event which has pissed me off, which brings me back to my aforementioned wondering. (Although indeed some may question why I have this song on my iriver in the first place). Not to worry, there's no sign that it ever happened now, so I'll get on with documenting the weekend happenings. I have a fair bit to recall and write, so while the time is now 09:12, I suspect it'll be some time until this is posted - I'm only typing bits in between work.A fairly busy and good weekend it was. Last night I went to a sort of Hoots staff BBQ at Mikes, didn't eat much more than a couple of marshmallows as we'd arrived late (in a failing Death Cab - it's constantly misfiring - with any luck it'll be something simple such as the spark plugs or leads). The others played circle of death, twice, both times never finishing. I didn't join in for the reason I'm sitting here. Very amusing to watch anyway. The rest of the weekend was a bit more interesting. Saturday night we went along to a large party on the dunes at Nairn beach. This was populated by local randoms from Nairn. Some people in 'the group' knew them, but Pete and I didn't. I took some photos of the very nice night and also of two wooden benches, which were now in the centre of a roaring fire. As Pete said later - you can't fault them for resourcefulness. Drunken drunkards seem to be good at finding good things to burn. Ricky had gone off to find Todd, who had gone off to find Kyle who'd somehow got lost in the caravan park. After spending some time standing amongst these drunken randoms we went to find the others. They were back in the car park and some others had turned up with them. I should mention at this point that Ricky was a passenger for once for he was not allowed to drive the Corsa which will all be explained below somewhere I'm sure - unless I drop dead before finishing this, that is. Anyway, he, Pete and I went to Pete's car and just played music for a while. Eventually Todd and Sarah returned and we stuck around a bit longer. I took more photos, including a good shot of Ricky kicking a wine bottle. Eventually we got bored enough to leave. We headed to Burger King at the retail park, just missing Simon (he was walking away as we left). Needing somewhere to eat our lovely healthy fast food, we went to Milton of Culloden. Once again I took random night photos and Sarah and Todd had a shot at driving Pete's Volvo. It was time to wrap that night up. Crap craic at the party but the night was alright in the end. Photos in the gallery. Earlier on Saturday Pete and I went to Dores just to sit in the sun. This was flawed due to the location of Dores - the sun disappeared behind the hills long before it did in Inverness. Anyway, Sean turned up randomly with some friends and we just spent some time there mucking about, killing time before the night. A good weekend for photos as I took yet more here, mainly of the action on the loch in front of us. Photos here
Now, Friday night was a completely different kettle of fish. We (shock horror) went on a road trip to somewhere completely new and different. It was a lovely evening, orange lit (although hazy) sky. For once, it was us (being Pete, Sarah, Ailie, Todd and I) who started the night off. We decided earlier in the day to go on a road trip and also set a time - 8pm. Well, I think we did pretty good considering and Pete pulled up in the Volvo outside my house a little after half past. It's unusual for things to happen in a timely fashion in 'the group'! We went to Tesco first for the essential food and fuel and I also wanted to purchase a road atlas - something we really could have done with later in the night - but they were sold out. I should have taken the OS Landranger 26 with me at least. Unaware of what was ahead of us we set off North up the A9 into the sun. It was not long before we hit the 30mph Tore roadworks and it took some time to get to the roundabout. Rogie Falls had been an idea but in the end we went right at the roundabout past the Clootie Well towards Rosemarkie. It had been many years since I'd been to Rosemarkie so it was nice to visit again. We spent some time just idling around, with me taking more photos as usual. The TV transmitter was just visible above a cloud clinging onto the hillside round the coast. It looked like it was floating. Sarah and Ailie went for a walk down the beach while Todd just stood and looked over the firth from the shore. Pete and I just chatted at the car park. Everyone returned and we chatted for a bit. By this time Ricky had 
been hailed and was trying to get us to return to Inverness. We suggested they came out to Rosemarkie though and they did. Here's where the description of "they" gets interesting. Ricky turned up with a car full, which was expected. What was not expected was the steady stream of cars which followed suit. Communication usually breaks down, but not today. Everyone knew where to be, quite how I don't know, but they did. In total there was a peak of 7 cars. That's a lot of people. We'd been at Rosemarkie for about and hour and a half by this time and had pretty much been and done it. The others having just arrived wanted to spend some time here so it took a good 50 minutes until some movement at around midnight happened. Abriachan was initially suggested and Rogie Falls was still an option, but it was quickly dismissed as 'Ropey Falls' by Bruce and the overall suggestion was Scatwell. Where the hell is Scatwell? I certainly didn't know exactly where it was until I looked at the map at the end of the night. Some people seemed to know where it was anyway, and helpfully, they sped off. A Bruce - Ricky - us convoy set off to catch up. Bruce was well ahead by Avoch and we followed Ricky hoping for the best. By this time it's worth mentioning that I'd hailed Sean who had set off with some friends to join us. This is the only thing that pissed me off that night. I'd told them to head to Abriachan, so they did. They were half way to the place when the now not-controlled-by-us group decided to change their mind and go to Scatwell. I had to phone them and explain how to get there, telling them to at least get to the A9 and head north. Back at the Tore roundabout we took the turning to Muir of Ord/Beauly. We passed through Muir of Ord and continued on towards Marybank. For some reason we took some fucked up minor road route as we had to turn left to go to Scatwell, rather than straight on. We headed up Strathconon on a very wiggly road. We went on and on and on with no sign of anyone. Some way down we met Bruce coming in the opposite direction. He said he'd been ten minutes down the road and 
seen nothing. Ailie was sure it was the right way and lived up to her 'mother' role and urged us to go on, so we did. I had been trying to explain to Steven in Sean's car the way to go. I have no idea how, but he got the idea we were leaving Scatwell even though I'd told Sean we were going there, from Rosemarkie. I then lost mobile reception on o2, and shortly after Vodafone faded out. We had climbed quite high up Strathconon and the mist was closing in. All I could do was hope they were going in the right direction. After some time we pulled round a corner and there was the HE sign telling us we'd arrived at the Loch Meig Power Station dam. We drove onto it and joined the three other cars already on it. We got out. Pete then freaked out a bit and explained to me he'd dreamt being here a few days before, and in the dream, he had died. Scary stuff. Putting this aside, the visit to the dam was great. It was a completely new place, woo. It's a pretty large dam with quite a drop down the side. There was just sufficient light filtering through the mist to be able to see. The light was pants for photos however. In the end I had to use 15s exposure and ISO1600 to produce a visible although grainy photo it was that dark. The mist was causing havoc with the flash. At this point in writing I'm recalling that there was something significant which happened that night which I thought I must remember to blog about, but I can't remember it. Sean never turned up. I assumed he'd just ended up turning back. After checking out the other side of the dam and taking some photos, the others set off up out the opposite we entered. All but Ricky's car and us were left. We set off to follow. The road out the other side is very dodgy. Pete was still paranoid about the dam, and particularly this road, as he remembered it. Ricky was right in front of us as we 
went down a hill and over a small bridge and suddenly he pulled over and put the hazards on. He'd hit a rock and burst his front far side tyre and scraped the side of the car. Pete said that he remembered that hill and had been driving very carefully and said that if he hadn't had the dream he may have driven faster and hit the rock himself. Ricky luckily had a few things in his favour. The first ultimately was Brian, the 2nd was that he was carrying a proper spare wheel and the 3rd was that both he and Pete had jacks. Brian was the star and very quickly jacked the car up and changed the wheel. Thanks to him after no time at all we were on our way again. It was a great relief when we hit the A835 as it's a nice wide A9-like road. Mobile reception returned and I rang Sean to find out what happened. They had turned back about 1ish. Sean sounded tired - I suspect I'd woken him, whoops! We sped towards Dingwall and continued on the road towards the Tore roundabout. Once again we trundled through the roadworks and then sped on towards Inverness. Sarah and Ailie wanted to go home so they were dropped off. Pete and I went up to Tesco to join the other 5 cars and that was a very enjoyable night over. Click here for the photos.That's 11:40 now. Time to paste this into Word for a spell check (for once) and get it posted, oh, and add in some images.
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