Counties weekend

Spent the weekend in Prestwick with the U/18 East of Scotland county team...the girls won each day overall - beating Isle of Man, South of Scotland & Gloucester - so we did well. We move up a division now (to be fair, we couldn't go down because it was the bottom division but still... :) )

**** FANTASTIC result for Scotland in the rugby on Saturday as well ****

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Birthday Weekend

Mum & I went shopping in Perth on Friday, which was great fun, yet surprisingly quite controlled :) I bought a new skirt & belt, and mum got me a bag to match! We joined dad up in Braemar and I spent my birthday morning with mum & dad for the first time since I was 16!! (I'm 24 now by the way, not 25 as suggested :) ). We went for a bike ride through Kinloch to Felagie, out at Crathie and then back through Balmoral Estate. It started snowing pretty heavily (my feet were freezing!) - the trees looked spectacular dressed in white.

I came back to Edinburgh for a night out with some school friends from Balwearie which was a great laugh... started at Lindsey MacKenzie's house, and went into town later on. The pic shows Lindsay McVicker, Lindsey MacKenzie (who shares a b'day with me), Emma Tasker and Nicola Crawford.

On Sunday I re-booted my system by going to the gym at Craiglockhart late morning, then came back to celebrate once more with Gav & Jen this time (I'm a great fan of making my birthdays last as long as possible). We had a really fun afternoon/evening at various pubs in Edinburgh, and even got to watch Andy winning his first ATP title (beating Hewitt in the final) on the big screen in Biddy Mulligans - I was pretty excited :)

All in all, it was a great birthday weekend, although I was quite happy I didn't have to work early on Monday morning :)

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Dinner Party

Gavin had a dinner party on Friday night...very sophisticated :) It was a great success, and we had a fun night in town afterwards. Cheese fondue starter, marinated chicken or steak & roast vegetable kebabs for main, followed by a fruit & chocolate fondue for dessert - tremendous!!

These are some of the other P.E. teachers he works with, plus Jen, all enjoying the chocolate fondue.

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Dunkeld, Lochnagar

Exploring Scotland like I explored New Zealand....that's what I'm planning for this year! Not sure how many weekends I'll have free, but I want to take advantage of them. Met up with Neil (friend I met in NZ who lives in Glasgow now) in Dunkeld on Saturday and we went mountain-biking for the day. The weather was fantastic, and there were some great trails. He assured me it wasn't going to be technical biking, but we started off taking a single track around cliffs - that rates as technical in my book :)









Great fun though, and brilliant views around Dunkeld.









Took my car from there up to Braemar (SO nice to have use of the house up there!) and made plans for some hiking on Sunday.

Decided on Lochnagar - walked in from Easter Balmoral and up to Glendashiel, then cut across the heather and clambered up the ridge to the on the West side of the loch. The sun was shining perfectly about 10 mins before we hit the top, but strong winds and clouds managed to appear just as we reached the summit :) Came back around the top of the corrie and joined the landrover track back to the forest at Balmoral grounds.










The last part was a bit boring (about 7 miles of the same!) but we jogged some of it to pass the time a bit quicker. Not actually a run, more of a shuffle because my feet were pretty angry with me by now - about a mile after we started they weren't happy with the boots, and rebelled by producing giant blisters on my heels. They probably didn't like the fact I made them continue for 6 more hours and climb a munroe as well :)

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