I have been putting this one off for a long time. For no other reason than There is so much to cram into it. A small books worth rather than a post. Macca covered it nicely so I’ll try and work in tandem to fill some gaps.

synopsis: 8 men in a caravan, bikes, meat, beer, banter and oban on our doorstep.

Now some of these men were french…5 of them to be precise. This plays a big part in the story. My english is pretty bad but my french would make del boy blush. We headed off from Glasgow bright and early to get the train to Oban. I was the only one taking my bike the rest were hiring theres at Oban. Train ride up is brilliant, took about 3 hours to get to Oban but the scenery is a great introduction to Scotland for some of the french that had never been before.

Arrival In Oban, found the bike shop where Christerry arrived…travelling from dundee with a car and bike attached to back his car indeed was a blessing in disguise. The Guy at the bike shop was very helpful and filled our ordinance survey up with good bike routes but more importantly pubs and good places to eat. Instantly a cycling holiday was made…didn’t even catch his name…let’s call him jeff.

Was here we chucked all our big heavy bags in Christerrys motor then headed off in the wrong direction to find the campsite. Found it eventually.A great wee cycle run that hugged the coast…nice easy road to cycle on. It would be this road we’d be cycling everyday to the pub and shops. Although Christerrys car did come in very handy.

Upon Arrival to the Campsite we found our caravan and were instantly turned to giggling children picking rooms and checking all the cupboards, maybe it was just me. There was the fear that as it only slept 8 it would be a bit of a squeeze…oh no it wasn’t it was huge. I had the foresight to send Christerry up ahead as driver and score us a good room. Not sure if he did, I didn’t fit on the bed…dunno if anyone else did. It was a pretty tall holiday in fairness. Me and christerry buddied up as the hobbits. Can I just now applaud Christerrys bed time banter…brilliant. There was so Much hilarious banter constantly but to laugh yourself to sleep everynight…hilarious…that was until macca introduced “whisper time” boooooo.

Day one seen macca and Christerry head off to get supplies in the motor…my word did they do well. Not only did they get a bbq (which had to be built, but they just swiped the already built display one…genius) they somehow rummaged through the reduced section and found a chunk of roast beef reduced from £10 to 10p…genius. Lots of beer and beef later we all knew it was going to be a magic holiday.

Next day cycling into town where we locked up the bikes outside the train station then went on a distillery tour. Brilliant fun…got some samples and bought a bottle for our EU caravan. Was from here on the way home we thought we would use our map and head for the big hill. Got a bit lost in all honesty but got there in the end. At the sumit we all swigged some whisky. I’m not a fan of whisky…on the tour, i did stuggle with the sample…at the summit however. Bit knackered sweating can’t really stand…it was just the job.

Nest Instalment of cycling randomness was kerrera a small island oppisite our campsite. A wee ferry goes back and forth for £6 return. Just a wee flatbed that could take a car at a push. Bikes on then off for adventure. The Island itself had 2 main cycle routes. Red and Green, we took red up to Gylen Castle. What a place that was…amazing. Ditched the bikes and walked round the cliffs. Loved it…was just like a mini stonehaven (yes everything will always be compaired to stonehaven). The cycle run ended with a massive downhill that got us straight back to the ferry. A great day out. The island also had a seal colony…but we never ventured to the green side.

Wednesday was the big cycle. Started off with main roads up to Connel Bridge to get some top scran from the glue pot. A nice wee local. Hanging outside above the door was a gluepot…can’t remember the relevance of it although once inside we found out it was unlucky not to touch it on the way in…good to find out…ONCE YOU’RE IN!

No bad luck fortunately but we did go up to Dunstaffnage Castle…which was pretty crap…they charged to get in…instant dislike…i didn’t even take a picture of it…that’s how much of a disappointment it was.From here we crossed the rail tracks and ventured into the hills back to Oban. Great fun. Loads of ups and downs and different track to cycle on. Another great downhill into Oban which ended with me cycling through a tree. Hilarious. Back to Caravan for more meat and beer ofcourse.

Thursday the group split…We stole one frenchmen but all the other french insisted on cycling nearly double what what we did the day before…nutters. We caved and cycled to the pub to sit and read newspapers and drink cider. Back to Campsite for some pier fishing and a little dip in the see….damn it be cold and salty round those parts…this i realise is pretty obvious to most but it was a beautiful day.

The others arrived only to sit for a while have a few beers then get back on the horse and head back into town for another night out…hardcore. Was here we stubled upon Barbera…our distillery tour guide…she got talking to us and told us a few good places to go…onwards we went only to discover…everywhere had shut up shop….doh. No worries she says…my folks are away lets go back to mine. Ok we say…don’t need a taxi our means of transport is locked up outside the trainstation. Bingo..10 people, 8 bikes and 1 light cycling in the dark about 3 miles up the coast. Hilarious. Eventually arrive to end up dancing (to wizards, i wish it could be christmas everyday) in a relatively random girls kitchen whilst drinking all her mum and dads wine. Brilliant fun, amazing banter. Eventually me and benoir headed home…about 4am I think so about 7 miles to cycle home…100ft into the journey…roughly at the bottom of the hill benoir slams his brakes on and goes over his handle bars…then laughs on impact…magic. 7 miles later in the rain as the suns coming up we get home….a good bit soberer than we were before we left.

If you’ve made it this far well done…sorry this is so massive. Some essays i wrote at school weren’t as big as this. We’re nearly there. Next day was a bit of a lazy one. Christerry drove us into town where we found an amazing wee cafe that did nothing but roast meats. Chicken, beef and lamb in big filthy sandwiches or with all the trimmings. Just the job. Pottered about in town going from coffee to coffee. Eventually headed back to the others who had just flopped all day but needed food. Not ones for getting back on the bikes we decided to get a couple of taxis. Oban is a small place…very small. Word had got out that a load of french invaders had taken to cycling at xam completely pissed…the police knew but thought it was funny cause they were french and also everyone knew we’d been to barbaras house. Hilarious it was outside the pub we received a phonecall (the bar staff brought us their phone and told us a jenny wanted to speak to us) another nightout was arranged then off to another pub for dancing and drinking. This pub contained the contents of the pink bus in our campsite…turns out it’s a gay bus full of swedish people on tour…they liked to dance…we got on very well…not that well. A taxi home at xam again where we told the taxi driver we’d been cycling it pissed in the dark proceeded to switch his lights off and drive us there…not so clever…didn’t die though…all good.

Saturday We returned the bikes very lazily, And it was from here me and Christerry parted ways. The remainders took train back to Glasgow for another nightout…harcore. Whilst i went back to dundee with Christerry then went back to the home comforts of Ma and Pa and to get my washing done. There are literally hundreds of hilarious things that happened…one of which was fishing and catching a pineapple…exactly…alot of stuff equally as funny…but look at the size of this…it’s just silly now. Amazing holiday, amazing company but most important of all…amazing meat

Unavoided (topright) not in the dictionary but in the scrabble one. Someone try and use it in a sentence…nonsense…but did win me the game

Well this weekend seen me down in London on a monopoly pub crawl. The jist: 26 pubs in 12 hours, tough work. The Reason: My brothers local barman is off travelling (I’m not a fan of football but apparently he looks like michael ballack) so needed a sendoff. I joined the crawl 12 pubs in (poor show I know) was great fun though. Not possible to do full pints in all the pubs, they’re well spread. Mostly buses and tubes. Was a great way to see London…I’m a big fan of things that are organised with the intent of getting lost. So now i’ve got the bug and am organising a glasgow subcrawl…who’s in?

What an awesome weekend I had. This weekend past seen the annual stonehaven feein market , a great exscuse to go home and see family and friends. I won’t bother explaing it all Macca has already covered it. For the sake of comedy i’ve cropped macca out of these photos insinuating he’s too tall…when infact he is in all of the photos…great gag. Good crowd back in stoney this year. Saunders gave me a lift up and macca gave me one back down…magic. We all headed down the road holding out for lunch…some big filthy burgers from the bbq stand. Then came decisions…burger…or hotdog…quickly we established we were having both.

From here a nice jaunty walk along the beach, round the harbour to the marine where saunders joined us and macca and christerry somehow didn’t know that you can untie your shoelaces with one easy pull…see results below…

Then to putting. It was decided early on that money would be used to spice this up a bit. £2 all in…zoiks i hear you cry…even funnier the fact we got on the putting green as children and only had to pay 90p each. I started off confident 7 under by the 9th hole…but choked under pressure macca won eventually and christerry went for the wrong hole eventually fiinding himself and saunders joint last.

From here we went back to somerfield (the field of dreams, just like the cafe in neighbours…everyone has worked there) for more meat and beer. Back up to my house fired up the bbq where we sat, drank and got very merry with most of my family…

Another awesome Stoney weekend which ended with Christerry being sick because he’s a secret vegetarian and can’t handle meat. Although in his defence he did have a sausage in a bun for breakfast the next morning…fair play/ denial

Well it had been on the cards for a while now, Loch Awe. It was booked last week. A full week up in a log cabin on the banks of loch awe. Me and Lee made the executive decision to get the train to taynault and cycle to dalavich (home of loch cabin). Lee had been there before and knew what the 15 mile trek to dalavich…this was the problem…no he didn’t. Miles upon miles of hills…mostly up. It took 3 hours to get there with bags and bikes.

Upon arrival (roughly at about 3) we soon realised all shops in the area were shut. Having taken no food with us we had to settle for pasta and chicken gravy (the only food the cabin had to offer). Venturing to the local pub we got some top scran (see below). let it be noted there was an extra bottle of kopparberg but lee fell over and smashed one.

next day up relatively early to hire a boat and go fishing…no luck..well I caught a pike, but not off the boat. Then to the pub for food. Dalavich has a post office and a pub. tis all. The pub did great food..I had scampi…magic. The food in the post office was limited, Even the loaves were frozen!

Saturday richie and his lady friend come over to play. Arriving at about 5 we took a bbq to the beach after richie brought with him some manly supplies (mostly meat). From here the midges took charge and chased us away. Then to eurovision. My favourite occassion. My Money was on france…awesome tune. not to be…lost a fiver. The finals were on in the local pub…who knew? from here it was back to cabin until this…

Sunday seen us jetting round loch awe doing some island hopping. Including an island with a castle and breaking a boat trying to get to a graveyard…mostly my fault :). ritchie had to go home so there was no other option but to go to the pub.

Monday my folks were heading over to say hello. So just a bit of fishing in the sunshine just infront of the cabin until they arrived. No luck but topped up my tan :). when they arrived my mum cooked up a top notch sheppards pie then back to pub…hoorah. Monday consisted of walking my folks dog. I found a snake turned out to be a slow worm.

we got a lift back to train station…ahh luxury. back to normality…well a public enemy gig

It seems my blog has gone all a bit great outdoorsy of late. So this is the official invite to come join the festivities. Things to do this year. The west highland way in september. Loch awe for some fishing this month…maybe even the next bank holiday Monday. And last but not least a wee jaunt on the caledonian canal. So who’s coming out to play?

What an Easter weekend I’ve had. Me and Lee decided a while back we were going to go camping. Even with all this talk of snow and britains coldest weekend of the year…pah. We worked friday and left early for Bute. Rothesay ticked all the boxes for our adventure. Including a ferry ride…woohoo. We found 2 bays, one on the Southern Tip (glen Callum) and one on the east coast (Ettrick Bay) of bute. The buses on Bute run pretty much bay to bay so we thought we would have one night on each. We arrived on Rothesay at about 5 and knew we would have to be pretty quick getting a tent up before it’s dark. We soon descovered that the buses to Ettrick Bay didn’t start running until April…Doh… That made or decision a bit easier so we headed south for kilchattan Bay a bus ride that lasts about 20 mins. Here we found the West Island Way, a walk that runs 30 miles around bute. Had no idea it exsisted but it looks great. we walked for about an 1hr when it got dark very quickly we found a great spot at a place called Glen Callum nice and shelttered. Lee gathered wood I put the tent up. We quickly discovered it was freezing cold and windy and a fire just wouldn’t work. On with the pasta and stir in sauce…champion. It was officially the worst nights sleep I’ve ever had. I took 2 sleeping bags…good job otherwise I think an easter dose of hyperthermia would have easily been on the cards. In the morning (about 7) I took this picture.

Was an amazing place we never really got a chance to see it before it got dark. So next on the adventure ticklist was fishing. Me and Lee had bought Some telescopic rods and a load of spinners. so to fishing…we didn’t catch a thing but it did feel very manly. after 3 hours of spinning we went to put on our breakfast…bacon and beans only to discover the bacon had gone….this was the last straw. Sleep deprived we took down the tent and headed back to kilchattan bay in the hope there was a pub. It was only here we realised how rough the path we walked the previous night was. I don’t recommend it to anyone in the dying light…A bit tipsy. back in Kilchattan bay we found the st blanes hotel were we had a well deserved burger and pint. Here we waited 5 pints for the bus back to Rothesay…might I recommend reading up on the bus times first. Once in Rothesay we had to make a decision on what to do…we couldn’t just go home. So In town we found a cheap B&B at an amazing £35 a night for a twin room. We had a knocked down price as the shower didn’t work. Me and Lee were dead on our feet. straight to bed at about 7pm on a Saturday night….hardcore.

I awoke at 6am to this…

Gentle tapping on the window followed by endless squawking. This fella just sat outside watching me sleep. I quite liked it in the end…I want one for my flat.

Revitalised we booked the hotel for another night (we eventually fixed the shower but you couldn’t turn the temperature down…we just took it like men!) and headed for Ettrick Bay. The buses were now running there for the easter weekend…boost. However the bus we got only went as far as port bannatyne about a 3 mile walk away. Armed with our fishing gear we headed north up the coast for about 45 mins until we found a great spot. Still didn’t catch anything and lee lost 3 of our 4 decent spinners. The rest we had didn’t have enough weight to cast any good distance at was at this point lee considered using some old keys as weights before quickly realising he would probably never see them again and that he did actually need them. Defeated again we headed back to the ettrick bay tearoom for coffee and burgers…magic.

Back to hotel for some rothesay fish and chips…amazing. We decided a big nightout in rothesay was on the cards…what could a sunday night in Rothesay have instore? First to the Black Bull…just round the corner…empty, eneded up having some banter with the owner an old man who had one huge knuckle, about how things were done back in the day. Onto the next the brandane bar was playing really nasty beepy techno but was clearly where all the action was. It was here the next song on the jukebox was boys to mens end of the road…we left. Next up was the taverna lounge bar. A strange we pub where it was clear we were not local but it was playing mostly glam rock which I enjoyed. Our last port of call was the Argyll Arms where we were informed they would have live music. What a performance. One old guy 2 keyboards and a guitar i don’t think that was his band name. He was playing sweet home chicago…which i know was originally by robert johnson…I had to tell him…that I to was a robert JOhnson he was very happy at this outcome and played other robert johnson tune dedicated to robert johnson. I was very happy…I Bought him a drink Whiskey and tonic £1.60. As we left I shook his hand then he said “I’ve never touched a robert Johnson before” It was a bit weird. but now i might make it a t-shirt “have you touched a robert johnson today?” Back to the hotel where I passed out on the bathroom floor then woke up at a 6am Monday to my feathered friend. Today we went for lunch on the pier then caught the ferry home (just). Back on the mainland we discovered that we just missed a train literally by seconds and that the lines to glasgow central were closed. Got the money back for our wemyss bay to glasgow journey bit, turns out the ferry across to rothesay only costs £3.50…genius. We hopped on a bus…then I had the fun of walking through the centre of town a bit stinky and muddy with a tent and a fishing rod. Loved it…Anyone fancy the west Island Way? Also put some more pics up on my flickr

What an awesome weekend (the one that’s just passed, been a bit busy) praise back to the facebook once again for delivery. “Camping” was on the cards this weekend so I came prepared. I lugged my two tents and rucksack into work in preparation….only to discover I wouldn’t need them at all because girls organised it and we were all staying in lodges…the above ones to be precise. We had beaver lodge and the girls (in the background) had bald eagle lodge which was apparently luxury…The first night beaver lodge was much better as we hosted dancing and crisps (who’s got the luxury now huh?). The place was just outside Tyndrum at Strathfillan Wigwams.

second night seen us at Caolasnacon Campsite where once again I wouldn’t need a tent as I would be in a luxury caravan…brilliant fun. Once again ordered a chip shop from on yonder (10 fish suppers and a burger) bit of scrabble bit of dancinf and a cheeky head massage thrown in. Brilliant. During the day did a spot of swimming in Loch Tulla just by the Bridge of Orchy which was nice then back for some soupage.

On the way home we pulled in at drovers Inn for a big massive sunday roast…all in all, an awesome weekend of “camping”

Chances are you don’t know this man…I can only wish that one day you do. This Is Thomas, he is french. He hosted my last holiday in France. This weekend he joined us In Bristol. It was Very Exciting. This weekend He delivered something very special…very special…not drugs :). This weekend he brought me palet which by the way I am very good at. The problem was finding it in this country. But alas Thomas delivered…So this is a big Thomas thankyou/shrine…Enjoy it with me by watching me beat Sam in the palet finals.

What a Fantastic weekend I Had. Mainly in part once again due to the genius of Facebook. A random weekend of Bristol Banter was on the cards thanks to Dave Macleod and all that live at number 14 for their Hospitality. Highlights Included Frisbee in the park with summer like weather, Dancing on a Barge, Sitting on the dock of the Bay, Bath, Operation and Cider. There are many many more hilarious things i could mention but i’m Hoping Macca might fill them.

The Video Is from a little Day jaunt over to Bath….Bowls is Awesome!!!