Concorde at East Fortune

Concorde at East Fortune
Last weekend in September is a traditional holiday weekend for us Glasgwegians. This time, in light of a wild-wet-west forecast, we headed eastward for the weekend. One of the places on the weekend's list was one of our favourite haunts - East Fortune Museum of Flight.
They'd recently taken delivery of a Concorde, and as part of 'doors open' were letting you have a sneaky peek at reassembly progress in the main hangar building. Should be ready next spring - which is probably faster than the likely finish of Niall's huge Airfix model he bought - which, as is traditional, needs his Daddy's assistance to assemble the many thousands of bits! :-)

We stayed at our fave campsite Barns Ness. Its a lovely spot, indeed. Well hidden, near the lighthouse - and fends off most of the crowds partly by its location half way in between a Nuclear Power Station and a Cement Works. (no, really). Brilliant site. We had our usual wee fire on the beach, with sunset over Bass Rock. Great stuff - really tested our 'family' dome tent to the limit of its wind-resistance though - good Scottish Vango design saves the day. A couple of years from now (we're told) Barns Ness will disappear and move to near Dunbar, a victim of the demand for Cement. The lovely red poppy fields near the access road have all but one now... enough nostalgia for now...

Rest of the weekend, we visited quite a few other interesting places. The Ratho Adventure Centre is amazing - a very large indoor climbing experience - we certainly will return. It made the Alien Rock in Granton seem quite diminutive, really. Another highlight was the Seabird Centre in North Berwick, which gives remote-controlled camera closeup views of the seabird population around that area - fascinating. Well recommended for those with kids, too - as is the chip-shop in Dunbar (not the one in North Berwick!).

On the way back through we stopped off at a surprisingly good Castle - Craigmillar Castle. Extremely well-preserved, with lots of nooks and crannys, combined with fantastic panoramic views of the surrounding Edinburgh - especially the new nearby Royal Infirmary. Well worth a visit, though.

Airshow 2004
For first time in a few years, went to the big annual Airshow at Leuchars in fife. The Red Arrows again were very impressive, as were the Eurofighter Typhoon, F15, F16, Tornado etc, etc.
Amazing the power in those jets...

Monty Python Holy Grail Castle

Doune Castle Monty Python Weekend
Well, as mentioned earlier, we attended the event at Doune Castle yesterday. What a surprisingly large turnout - which I think the Historic Scotland people were totally overwhelmed by. Lots of people in excellent costumes, re-inactments not of battle scenes, but of famous sketches from the Holy Grail film, celebrating 30th anniversary of the filming on location at Doune.

"...
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.

Dennis: Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. "

Great stuff! Thanks again George and Co. Hope you do it again sometime. Mebby get some celebs turning up next time?

And I thought Scotland had bad Weather!
Hurricane alley
My cousin Graham in Florida emailed me a couple of days ago with a url to show the path of hurricane Frances - currently heading his way. Just heard on the BBC news about over 2 million people having to be evacuated. Had a quick look at their local news station (www.local6.com) to find that yes, indeed they're all told to evacuate (millions of them) and go into the emergency shelters. Wow! It sure does put our humble 'bad' weather in to perspective!
My hopes and wishes go out to all of them out there.
As I write, its Friday pm - it's due to hit them on Saturday.
Good luck, you guys. Take care.

Norwegian Holiday Photies

Holiday Snap Weeding
Spent my lunchtime today weeding. I got round to selecting some out of the 460 snaps - for you rellies and pals - you can access them here if you'd like.

Hope the php script I knocked together at lunchtime works, though.

Testing mail-to-blogger functionality

Testing mail-to-blogger
This is a neat feature provided by our friends at blogger.com, which
means I can blog quickly by (in theory) firing off a quick email.
Hopefully this'll work. I sent this email at 12:55 on 2nd September, so
we'll see how long it takes to get there!