My timing SUCKS. Seriously.

This will probably be my last post from the South Atlantic (this trip...) and five days ago I was really looking forwards to coming home.
I still am, mostly, but some things have happened in the last few days to make me wish for a bit longer here.
Since my last entry I was invited to go on a capability day by the RIC (Roulement/resident Infantry Company) which was the Rifles and is now the Green Howards (Yorkshire) where they showed us what they do, where they do it and make lots of things go BANG!
It was a good chance to see the range they use, for which we forecast, but most of us haven't been there. I got a panoramic of the range (which won't be posted) and some rather decent shots of things going bang. As I'm a civvie I wasn't allowed to shoot anything but did get to play with a sniper rifle that had been made safe.


Managed a couple of trips into Stanley and the road has been refilled. The first time I drove it, I managed to hold 40 odd mph for most of the way, feeling safe all the time. Unfortunately the last time the pot holes were starting to reappear. Not as bad as before (see previous entries) but enough to make 40 unsafe for many stretches. Ahh well, had decent stereo in the L200 each time so the trip was still good.
After this I got on another flight, this time on a Hercules C-130k. Supposed to be to the South Sandwich Islands but owing to a lack of air refuelling aircraft we only went to South Georgia. "Only" of course being relative.

When I can I'll stick up more photos, or have a look at my Flickr account, the link is in the "links" section on the right.
The Herc is an interesting aircraft, it was pretty full and all of us wanted the good photos. We were flying pretty low, about 1000 ft above the water, we were all wearing immersion suits (bit like dry suits) and one side door was open, as was the top part of the rear ramp. As there were protective nets over all the open doors to get clear shots you had to bag one of the small windows or get right up to the net. One guy had positioned himself lying down to get his lens out of the side door but was not going to move. I tried to get decent pictures then move out of the way, getting blatted by the wind and bounced by the aircraft.

On the way back we were escorted in by an F3, which was pretty damn cool!

The weather forecast was pretty much spot on for the whole trip, which is very satisfying.

The big bit of news this week: a couple of weeks back a new teacher came to the school here, called Kate. We got on great and a couple of days ago hooked up. I'm going to try to get a few pictures of her to put up, if she'll let me.
Yes, that's right, I'm no longer single.
The week before I fly 8000 miles away.
Arse.
You see what I mean about my timing? We both knew the situation at the start and are both a bit bummed by it. Her tour down here is for 2 years so there's a good chance I'll be back down before she leaves but even so it's not the best. We're going to see how things turn out but for now we'll enjoy the next couple of days together.
So I've gone from really looking forward to going home to wanting more time here. I never keep it simple, do I?

Volunteer Point and two new kinds of penguin.

I went to the northeast of the Islands today, to a place called Volunteer Point. It was windy but the sun was shinning.

We saw lots more penguins, the usual Gentoos

but also Magellanic

and King penguins.

I didn't get all the pictures I wanted, half way through I made a mistake with my camera and got the shutter speed too low, resulting in camera shake. Some of the pictures I got were alright though. Well, I think so, what do you think?

One of the things that was quite funny was that people would be focused on the birds in front of them and not notice others just behind them.

Kings live for around 20 years and can dive to around 1000 ft on their 500 mile hunting trips - that's 500 miles in each direction...

They feed their young for about 18 months until their first fluffy feathers drop off and the smooth ones for swimming come in. The youngsters are the ones covered in fluffy brown feathers.

The 'guins around this time of year were just about to moult, in one case already moulting.

So then it was back to the mess for tea and toasties.

Oi've been drivin' in moi carrrrrrr..

Or rather, borrowed one from the hire guys on camp, specifically a Mitsubishi L200 pick-up, which I rather liked. I had a day off last week at the end of the big exercise that was on (couldn't say owt about it last week but should be okay now it's over) so I figured it would be a good time to take a bimble into Stanley. A bimble is a trip out of camp. I didn't get a picture of the "Stanley - twinned with Whitby" sign but I will in the future.

So, driving on road in the Falklands...

The road varies between fairly decent surfaced road to dirt track with stonking great potholes in it, usually spaced just right to cause the vehicle to skip across the tops, loosing all grip and making the rear of the car snake out beautifully. If there aren't any potholes, chances are you're driving on a surface mainly made of small stones that will roll under the wheels, basically doing the job of ball-barrings in detaching your grip from the road. It's fun. Honest.
The speed limit on the Islands is 25 in the town (THE town, there's only one), 40 out of town and 30 on camp. That's camp as in Mount Pleasant, not Camp, which is a term used for anywhere out of Stanley, based, we think, around the word "campo" used for the farmland/hilly areas. Still with me?

As an aside, the clocks went forwards this weekend so Stanley and Mount Pleasant are now at GMT -3 hours but Camp is still at -4 hours as they don't use daylight savings in the same way as the camp do. So in leaving Stanley, you change timezones until you reach Mount Pleasant. This means we're 4 hours behind the UK until they put their clocks back, at which time we'll only be 3 hours behind. Clear, eh?

Anyway, back to the roads. As the car I was driving (which I would love for Christmas, if any rich nutters are reading) can be changed from 2 to 4 wheel drive on the move, I got quite good at slowing before the road surface changed, sliding into 4WD and avoiding the worst of the holes. It's only 35 miles to Stanley but it took me about 80 minutes to do it, which was fast enough, thank you very much! I think the record is unofficially 36 minutes but I'd like to live to see home again. Beside, fines for speeding range from £300 to £3000 with a night in jail so keeping below the limits isn't hard, even if the limiter is a bit faulty, as it was on my wagon.

About two thirds of the way to Stanley you start to see some interesting physical features on the hill side, the famous Falkland Rock Rivers, or Rock Runs as they're also known. I say famous, certainly famous amongst geologists. They are basically what appear to be rivers of rock that flow from the tops of the hills down to the sea. Theories about them generally focus on a glacial origin followed by extensive and extreme freeze-thaw weathering that results in very sharp rocks. I'll try to get some pictures next time. I was planning to stop but I ended up concentrating so much on not dying that I missed the chance.

*edited to add* I've managed to get some pictures of the Rock Runs, I'm afraid they were snatch shots from a helicopter so not as good as they could be but I think you can make out the way the rocks do seem to flow down the hillside. Looks like it could be an interesting topic to look into in more depth.

Around the same time you start time I started to see the signs warning of the major danger in driving off road without paying enough attention. Minefields.

Left over from the conflict in '82, these mainly centre around Stanley but are possible to find all over the Islands and are the only area that solid barriers line the road. You don't often see this sort of sign around in the UK.

There are stiff penalties for entering a minefield (aside from being blown up), as there are for making a mine explode. You might well be wondering why they don't get them all cleared, well, the important areas have been cleared but the locals have said that they'd rather the money and time went to clearing mines in other countries, rather than here, where everyone knows about them and can avoid them. That's what I've heard anyway, and if it's true then good on them!

In Stanley I did some touristy shopping (soooo many penguins!) and had a lovely lunch in the Malvinas Hotel. Do visit, try the squid rings! Then went for a pootle around the town, found a signpost


which reminded me of a bit in Pratchett's Jingo. The Ankh-Morpork soldiers had erected a signpost with distances to where they lived but as they all lived in one city all the arms pointed in one direction. At least this one had bits like "Oban, the long way round" - way before Ewan and Charlie!

Then a drive home and some time spent cleaning the wagon and I was done for the day.

I like these Islands. They're a long way from home but there's a good feel to them.

Balls and kilts

Summer balls that is.
I'd invited a couple of friends up to come to the camp summer ball the other weekend, and I think they enjoyed it.
The dogs are (left to right) Rosie, Rossie and Puddles (nee Rolly).
There were people in frocks, uniforms, kilts and dinner jackets, the shortest skirts were being worn by the men.

As with most balls at the mess there was also a selection of entertainments...Tom, a pilot, on a monkey bike.

Tasha and myself on the bikes.
Dodgems, with the station commander homes in on Tasha.Bungee running, BIG powerful elastic bands round your waist and try to reach the end before being pulled back onto you arse. Great fun.Mechanical bull with Tasha about to fall off, and...

Chris looking the part - McBrokeback Mountain anyone?

And the best, pudgel stick fighting!!! Chris and myself about to spar. Contender ready!

A big old week.

A few weeks ago a friend suggested that we climb a hill for charity. A simple enough proposition, but this friend has an habit of suggesting fairly large hills.
So, for the Trail100/WaterAid challenge we were to climb An Teallach.
The walk in was nice, 3 km along and about 800 ft up, after that it got a bit vertical. Once we got to the ridge things got better, although we skipped a couple of tops and a major bit of grade 3 scrambling (which is a rope away from a V Diff climb) before gaining the summit of Skurr Fiona (middle peak in this image). At the summit it was calm, warm and sunny. By this point I'd been sun burnt but didn't realise it yet.
From there we went down then back up to Bedean a' Ghlas Thuill and the cloud came in.
One peak at 1060 m, one at 1062 (3484 ft), from about 50 ft start.
So far so good. Unfortunately for the rest of the group, the vast majority of walks I've done of late have been winter walks and so, when I went through my flat grabbing my kit, I grabbed my normal kit, including liners and my normal mountain walking socks. Note to self, when walking in summer, DO NOT WEAR WINTER SOCKS!!!!!
By the time we'd reached the major down hill I was suffering from self inflicted injuries on my feet, to whit, soggy socks and bad feet. Hurt lots. Also ran out of water - three and a half litres just not enough for hot days on big hills. I promise not to complain so much next time.
We had to change camp site that night - midges in Scotland are a bad thing and our first site was a touch close to the water. So close that we had to spend an hour and a half lighting a fire to get enough smoke to drive off the evil little bastards. We could have got it lit sooner but we were using flint and steel, and shaved sticks. When we got the fire going there was a definate "Ha, we are men, we make fire!" moment. I was using a head net as well, they look stupid but damn they work.
Didn't manage to avoid midges completely though, mainly on my feet where I was letting my soles dry out...Sorry about the ugly feet. Bugger did they itch! Best thing I've found for them was Boots Bite and Sting Relief cream. Or not uncovering skin to get bitten. Midges are a sod, the only good things about them are they are good for bats and other animals.

Next day, legs ached, feet itched, sunburn was a real bugger but we had survived An Teallach. Fantastic. We took the west coast route back and saw soooooo many amazing hills.

The rest of this last week, well, my parents have been up visiting. We went to see Culloden, which was really good, they've got a new centre there about the battle that's better than I was expecting. In addition mum and dad wanted to get to the top of Cairn Gorm. Last time they were up we took the funicular railway up but if you do that you can't go all the way to the summit; the only way to get to the top is to walk all the way up from the car park.
Now, my dad's 63, and used to be in the mountain rescue in the air force when he was much younger; my mum's 61 and didn't used to do much exercise, although she's been going to the gym three times a week for the last 7 months. This would be the biggest thing dad had done for a long time, and the biggest thing I think my mum had ever done.Mum's wearing a dear-stalker she'd bought in Braemar and dad is in a flat cap. They're both wearing jackets I recommended to them and I'd fitted mum out in wind proof gloves and neck gaiter, as well as Gore-tex gaiters. Which was a vast improvement on what she was planning on wearing up a hill that tops out at 1245 m, 4081 ft (trousers tucked into socks..).
Weather was good for most of the route up, until we got to the Ptarmigan restaurant, from where you head up to the summit. The wind picked up, the rain (and a bit of sleet/wet snow) started and the cloud came down. We made it up, and here's the proof. Mum and dad approaching the summit of the Cairn Gorm (I'm leaning on the summit cairn to get out of the wind).
Most people think that cairns (piles of rocks) are just to mark summits or just to look nice. Nah. When you're at the top and need a route in poor visibility you can use your compass and map, your GPS or you can follow the handily placed line of stone markers, visible in all but the very worst weather. Live saver!
We had a meal in the Ptarmigan and caught the train back down, much easier than walking!

So there we have it, six days, three Munros, even more tops, sun burn, midge bites, sore legs and feet, many miles covered and money raised for charity, and two very happy parents.
Not a bad week, all in.

A Good Day.

Today is a bank holiday for most of the UK, but not Scotland. Fortunately the air force take it as a day off. Most of the time recently I've wasted the extra days I've had, or got to the end of the day and thought "wow, I've done nothing." Okay, actually I think, "I've played a good amount of XBox and got a bit of exercise, which is not too bad." And then I've thought of the untold possibilities that each new day presented and realised that I've just walked down the same path I've been down countless times before. (For reference, yes I am paraphrasing the xkcd comic I've got hanging in my kitchen.)
Today was different; I'd told myself I'd use today and by gum I have! One of the guys in the mess recommended the mountain bike tracks at Fochabers so today I hitched my bike to the back of my car and headed over to the Fochabers Ring. I didn't know it was the Fochabers Ring until I got there, I just headed over and found a route. So off I went, along a nice gentle undulating track then hit the uphill section. I knew that I was following a route that had red or orange labels on the posts, followed it from the monument at the top of the hill and then turned back.
I have my limits, and when the route labels go from orange to black with a skull and cross-bones (seriously!), that's a good time to find the different route. Apart from a bit at New Year's, I haven't done much proper off-road biking for ages, used to do quite a bit in the summers with the activity camps so I wasn't sure what I could remember of the more technical side of biking. I reckoned I still had the basics but when the sign recommends expert biking, walking the route first and warns of tables, drops, jumps and moving see-saws; it becomes time for the better part of valour.
As it is, back up the hill to the monument and followed the long route through Rohan and into The Mirk Wood (yeah, there's a whole Lord of the Rings thing going on) and wow. It was absolutely wonderful, some lovely singletrack with nice flowing sections and some interesting bits that demanded concentration. Better, I think, than the bits we used to ride in the Forest of Dean. Aragon Alley was poorly signed and had a depressing amount of narrow uphill with lots of exposed routes which was much more difficult but in a rewarding kind of way.
So yeah, loved it. When I got back I looked up the route (and the page I linked to earlier) and found out that the route colour corresponds to difficulty, just like on the slopes. The red route I was on turns out to be graded difficult - for "proficient mountain bikers with good off-roading skills." Turns out I remembered more than I thought about biking. Will be going back (and if anyone fancies coming up with a bike, or wants to hire one, please feel free!), especially now I've found that map with the other routes in the area.
After that little adventure (mainly on hope, but with coffee for breakfast) I got home, cooked a very nice little chili (another major achievement), caught up with a friend's latest blog entry, did some more washing and watched some great TV (weather gadgets on The Gadget Show). Now I plan to read more of a good book (Xenocide in this case) and try to figure out how to write my next entry without quite so many phrases in parenthesis.
It feels great to look back on a day and think that I've done something different to my normal routine. Actually, yesterday wasn't a waste either, I tidied up and caught up with my ironing. Of the two, guess which day was better. Guess which one I'll be trying to do again.