Little bit hungover right now

First off, cheers to Morgan for pointing out that I've been misspelling caffeine for two years.
At the mess last night heard some great tales and had a great time. Have a type 2 hangover right now and was worried when I got up because I had made a load of comments on facebook when I got back in.
Having a look at them I think they're okay but I really shouldn't drunk type.
In case you're wondering, there are 6 levels of hangover.

1. In a type 1 you have a little bit of a headache but nothing special, probably don't even need an aspirin.
2. Now you want an aspirin/fizzy-headache-cure of your choice. You've got a mild headache, your stomach feels a bit off-colour but give it a couple of hours and you'll be fine.
3. This one is what my friend used to call a "hangover in the form of poo." It's worse than a type 2 but only until you go to the loo, at which point everything clears up.
4. Here things start getting serious. Your stomach is growling, your head is pounding and you don't want to be moving much.
5. By this point you're swearing off booze forever. Your head isn't pounding, it's a constant pain. Your stomach is not your friend - it's trying to eat itself. If you decide to stand up (fool!) you'll soon sit down again, trying to move is a bad idea.
6. This is the biggy. It's self inflicted so don't expect people to be sympathetic, although it would be nice if they were. Your head and gut will be horrific, light should be avoided, pure water is a waste - I'd recommend fruit juice. Stay in bed, you're not going anywhere.

There's the old rule that four o'clock is the magic time when a hangover will clear but that only counts for type two and four. Type 5 can only be cleared by sleep and type six is a two day suffering that can only be cured on Sunday afternoon in the pub with friends, by which point you'll be drinking soft drinks with your roast lunch.
This brings me onto hangover cures - there are none! If you can be cured, any cure will work. My preference is alka-seltzer xs, but at the moment nurofen is enough. Replacing electrolytes and re-hydration drinks help but as my dad once told me, the only thing that cures a hangover is 24 hours with sleep. Once you get in, you're not actually asleep. You're not conscious but it's not proper sleep, that comes later. Mixing drinks will usually make the hangover worse, it's a chemical imbalance after all and different types of drink will have different effects on your blood chemistry.

Not sure why I'm blogging this, but I just felt like putting it down.

Anyway, hopefully England will play the rugby better today than last weeks abysmal performance against Scotland.

Mountains, midges and muscles

This weekend I've been out with Tasha, Chris and some friends of theirs from their work.

We went to Glen Coe camping (me in my new wonderful tent - oh it's nice!!!). The idea was that we'd do a peak on Saturday with all of us and another couple that would meet us at the start of the walk, then on Sunday Tasha, Chris and myself might get another peak in. We met up in the car park, and I discovered a new part of Scotland. The Midges, (they deserve the capitol M). We were next to a river, which was bad enough but when the sun was heading down the sky filled with them. The little bastards were biting every bit of exposed skin available. Out came the Deet 50, with a warning to the others not to get it on synthetic materials, but it was the barbecue that drove them off until morning.
The hill we were planning on Saturday was Buachaille Etive Mor, or as Nicola put it as Tasha and her drove past it on the way in, "Oh My F***ing God!" Starts at 280 M and ends at 1022 M, with most of the ascent 2 1/2 KM. Or to put it another way, 920 ft to 3350 ft in a mile and a half. As the peak is over 3000 ft, it's a Munro. There's another three Munro tops on the peak, the plan was to do all of them and follow the route out but after the second one with the wind blowing strong as hell, the cloud below us and the rock wet and slick, we had to recalculate. Three of the group hadn't done any hills like this and had no ridge time. The ridge to the second peak was quite broad, and from Stob An Doire (second one) to Stob Coire Altruim it looked about the same.
It wasn't.
The ridge went from ten foot wide and gentle to about two foot wide and nasty looking. So we did the only thing we could in the circumstances. We binned it. Cue a back track to the saddle and a descent via scree, wet stones, wet grass and seating glissade (sitting on the wet grass and sliding down the hill - it was good enough for Shackleton!). By the time we got back to the cars my legs were sore as hell. Nicola and the other couple (whose names I can't spell I'm afraid, nice guys though) headed back to Glasgow, while Chris, Tasha and myself headed into Fort William for dinner. Our kit was sodden and we were all damaged in some way or other.
And then came the next morning. Tasha and Chris' knees were buggered, as were my thigh muscles, so we scrapped the idea of doing a hill and dispersed, planning another hill for the coming weekend. We did also find what could be the one of best pubs in the world, the Clachaig Inn. To say that it's a climbers pub is a bit of an understatement. Think I'll be back there at some point.
I think some of the sodding midges hitched a lift home with me, though, I've been itching like a bastard all day (from the midges! Nothing else).