The only way is up - or possibly down

People often ask "Hey Alan, why are you so fab and groovy?", obviously not to me personally but I'm sure to various people named Alan who don't look anything like me and frequent trendy, fab and groovy places.

What they do ask however is "Hey Alan, why are you always going up mountains, munros, corbetts, hills and anything else of an upwardly inclined persuasion?" (Or downwardly inclined if you happen to be a mountain goat, although having never been asked the question by a mountain goat I am unable to confirm if they would be in the least bit interested in by direction of vertical travel.

Having spent a considerable amount of time pondering this question, or at least the length of time it takes to realise that Alistair Darling is a bit of a tosser who probably thought that Northern Rock was a confectionery factory in Blackpool (although rather ironically in the same sticky situation), I have came up with the answer......

To cut out the middle men.

You see I occasionally attempt to play golf and just spend all day climbing hills searching for the golf ball. I sometimes go ten-pin bowling and invariably spend most of my time walking back to my seat pissed off having managed to be shown up by the annoying teenagers in the other lane. I sometimes play badminton and spend all my time running around, falling and missing the shuttlecock. I sometimes go swimming and spend all day climbing the stairs to the top of the flumes so I can wreck my trunks on the way down.

So I figure why not just cut out the searching, getting pissed off, falling or wrecking trunks parts and just go straight to the climbing and walking bit. Plus you can't have a flask of soup and a sandwich in a swimming pool, you cant go for a pee behind the badminton net when you're caught short, you cant take muddy boots into the golf club bar and you can always trip up any annoying teenagers and blame their fall on the rough terrain.

A "Cobbler" and dodgy socks

The Cobbler

Due to a logistical washing machine faux pa I had to head up "The Cobbler" today wearing a pair of ASDA George Bri-Nylon sports socks with my boots.

The resulting blisters are of Vesuvian proportions..

Still managed to get a cracking panorama shot (above) with the inaccessible peak in the foreground, although its not really that inaccessible just as long as you don't lose your bottle on the shear drop.


Me looking a bit serious, and learning valuable lessons about socks from ASDA and keeping up with laundry.

William Wallace - The Return

While my mate David and I were up Ben Lomond recently we took it upon ourselves to remind some of the tourists exactly what part of the country they were in.

This was taken in the middle of June and if you look closely you an see the snow falling horizontally !!

Needless to say they're were one or two who had to ask what the flag was of and what the connection was......some folk eh ???