Scotland at New Year

'I'm glad we left the boats at home' was repeated several times during the week especially when looking at numerous frosted boats on top of car roofs in Morrison's car park, Fort William. There were apparently some crazy people that were desperate to paddle even on just a trickle of water amongst a whole lot of ice. Madness. 

I was constantly reminded of the time we were in the same area over 10 years ago (with some of the same group who we were with this time), only last time it was us driving from river to river and throwing a breeze-block sized brick off the Roy bridge every morning to optimistic, but very unrealistic (the rock was bouncing off the layers of ice below), comments of "it's definitely thawing, we should have water by the end of the week!" Distillery tours and walking by the side of frozen rivers kept us entertained on that particular trip and by the last day we finally realised 'it definitely wasn't thawing, and we weren't going to get any paddling done' 

I think that time in Scotland was the first of my 'weather-witch' epics, so thankfully now we have broadened our sporting repertoire and we have also lowered our boating-temperature threshold (Cam has a threshold of 8 deg C, he doesn't get much boating done in this country

 anymore!) so in view of the 'it's going to be really really cold and hasn't rained for weeks' weather-forecast we packed bikes, walking shoes and climbing harnesses (for indoor use only!) and the boats remained totally frost-free at home. 

It turned out to be great weather for biking (although occasionally a little too icy) as despite having to

 wear more thermals than usual and having frozen toes at the bottom of most of the hills, towards the top of the hills my feet were mainly thawed and we were blessed with blue skies,

 also the frozen ground meant no muddy kit/bikes at the end of the rides. 

Whilst there we took the opportunity to walk up a 'mountain' (it wasn't quite a mountain, but my legs thought it was).... 

And saw some great sunsets: 

Now back in Reading I have finished full-time teaching and unsurprisingly, given my Weather Witch status, it looks like Hurley is going to be on 1 gate very shortly and will most likely stay that way until I head out to Uganda at the end of the month.