Waterfalls and watermelons - robert, 07/06/2006, 10:36
F**king hell. Yes, I'm on the 7:30 shift and have been participating in more late night shenanigans, boy am I suffering now - bed for me when I get home. I think the last time I was this tired (and only once before) I called in sick. It's going to be a very long day. Anyway, yesterday ended with a watermelon being lobbed from Rose Street car park. Pete had mentioned to me earlier in the day that a road trip to the Falls of Foyers was in order and by the evening we were still up for it. Ricky had picked up Todd, Euan and a guy called Sean who I wasn't so familar with. They went to Starbucks. To cut a long story short, by the time Pete had had his dinner it was about half 10 and was getting dark. Having had time to get stuff together, I remembered to bring a map, torch and PMR handhelds. The torch was very much needed at the falls and the PMRs even more so later on in the trip.At this stage in writing I've become too tired to think up what to say, so the rest of this will have been written and then posted once I'm home and have slept. Edit: I went to bed when I got home, had something to eat, then slept through to this morning so I'll continue, a day late...
After filling up at Tesco inshes, we headed out the Dores road, passing Ricky who had parked at the side of the road. They obviously thought we hadn't noticed them as they proceeded to flash headlights at us from behind. A car was blocking the road ahead and we managed to overtake it before an oncoming lorry. Ricky got stuck behind the car so we ended up ahead. We waited at the Dores Inn for them to catch up and they sped past. We branched off to the right along Loch Ness side towards Foyers. Now, at this time we were fast approaching 6/6/06 so we were expecting some dubious people hanging around Boleskine. We passed with no sight of anyone, however. We continued to bounce over the hills and reached Foyers about midnight. It was a good thing I'd taken my torch as there wasn't a lot of light to see by and the path down to the falls is a bit dodgy in places with no rail. We first visited the upper viewpoint and could see the waterfall in front of us. My camera, however, didn't want to see it and I had trouble getting a picture of it using long exposure without a tripod. We then went to the lower view point. From here you can clearly see the base of the waterfall and the pool it lands in. Again I had a time taking photos. After chatting for a bit, we took a look down another path which went over a small wooden bridge and appeared to have what would be an impressive view in daylight to the left. We made our way back up to the cars and contemplated on what to do next. I suggested we went back via the twisty unmarked road to Errogie, so we did. Before we left I passed one of the PMR radios to the other car. On the way to Inverfarigaig we, in a Volvo S40, got airborne as we flew over a hill. After laughing about this for some time we arrived at Boleskine where we'd decided to stop for a bit. While waiting here a car came down the hill towards us. This caused some panic as we were sitting in the middle of the road with engines off. Ricky moved down to the car park and there was enough room for the car to pass us. We were relieved it wasn't police, who we expected might be covering the area due to the date. Once Pete stopped shaking from the adrenalin rush we continued along the road, taking a right at Inverfarigaig. At Errogie we were told to go right as Euan wanted to show us something. We never did find what "his thing" was, we turned after a while. The next thing to be asked over the radio was how to get to Farr which I thought Ricky would know anyway as we had some fun on this bit of road before, maybe his thing was there? I instructed them to just keep going but when we reach the large unmissable junction between the B862, which we were on, and the B851. Well, they missed it, and flew past hot on the tail of another car. I told them to turn around and we continued on the right road. We rounded a corner and came across a fantastic sight of the valley floor covered in mist with the orange and blue dawn-lit sky above. We stopped while I took some photos.
There was a lot of suicidal widlife about and Pete had some time avoiding rabbits which just kept running in front of the car. Afer what turned out to be a near miss there was a crunch. We stopped and ran back thankfully only finding a pothole. We continued on, past the remains of a rabbit which didn't look like it'd been there too long, perhaps Ricky hit it. The others were wondering where we'd got to by now and we met them at Farr. Choosing not to return to Inverness via this route, we continued on till we hit the A9. We had a "race" (by that I mean we had the advantage but were not pushing it - Pete won't drive above 100 for fear of losing his licence which I agree on, Ricky later said he hit 110 in his 1.0 Corsa) down the long approach to Inverness. Pete deliberately kept parallel with Ricky for a good way and talking out the window was attempted but doesn't work due to wind noise! We stopped at Tesco Inshes petrol station for fuel then went up to Tesco Extra for food. After we came out Euan went back in to get a watermelon. This watermelon was now doomed, its destiny was to end up in bits. We went to the Rose Street multi storey car park - a familiar place for chucking things off. We got nice and dizzy going round and round, slowly getting further to the top. The top was blocked off by some orange cones. Oh noes, whetever shall we do? Ricky drove into one and ended up pushing it up the ramp and onto the roof, leaving a nice space for us. Once on the top we ended up at a bad end - right below a CCTV camera, so we moved to the other end which had some bins and other junk in an alley below. Euan lobbed the large fruit, aiming at a plastic bucket. It hit the rim and the rest exploded onto the ground. We legged it into the cars amd sped off down to the lower level. There were orange cones at the exit ramp which Pete was unable to move in the car - one got wedged under the wheel, so he had to get out and move them. We went round to investigate the mess before heading home. I often wonder - is there anyone else in Inverness like 'the group' who get up to all this sort of stuff? I don't hear of this sort of thing happening outside of it.My spending this month has so far been down a good bit and I'm hoping I'm on track for getting a car next month. I'm a bit split between what sort of a car I want to aim for. Your small 3 door Ford Fiesta handles brilliantly and is very reliable but then is impractical for passengers. For the same price you can buy a small family car which don't handle so well and generally have more problems but are much more practical. I suspect it'll be something along the lines of a pre '98 Vauxhall Astra (although you have to watch the clutch in these - replacement requires removing the engine). A turbo diesel 306 would be nice but Peugeots tend to have expensive problems it seems and are also popular, so prices are high unless you buy one with a huge milage. I think I'll just have to wait to see what my budget ends up as, leaving enough for insurance and monthly expenses then go have a look round locally for something suitable. If that fails I could look further afield, I'd have to include travelling costs in the budget then however.
I had a chance to try out recording at The Raigmore again on Sunday. The Sony mic power box worked better than my home brew battery box. I think the Sony one has some capacitors in it for bass roll-off. My battery box didn't have any capacitors, although I will add in a 2.2 µF one before I next use it. I got a fairly good recording of The Rites and an OK one of Tiny Dancers - I had the mic on my person and people kept standing in front of me so the treble wasn't brilliant.
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