The Glenlivet Escapade

The story of our expedition to the traditional archery contest, the Glenlivet Frostbite Quaich, which I put my name down for at the turn of the year, is going to be essentially a story of incompetence. It was one of those times when my withitness was not working full throttle, shall we say.
          The journey on Saturday started well except that I forgot my waterproof trousers (minus one point). Ah well, the weather was dry at least, if cold. I could always wear the jogging pants under my baggy cords for warmth, a la Roger in Swallows and Amazons. We tested what The Crianlarich Hotel had to offer in the way of coffee and snacks and gave them full marks (+four points) for the shortbread (me), the flapjack (Mr Toad), and the white chocolate fudge (Toadlet). Also for the coffee. Onward! We trundled through Killin and alongside Loch Tay. We spoke of the Tilt tilting into the Tummel and the Tummel tum(b)ling into the Tay, and made our way to Aviemore where we were booked into the youth hostel for the night.
          Except for a bunch of ski-ing Hullabaloos in the room next to us (there were three of them but they sounded like six: –three points. I hope you're keeping the tally!), the YH clientele were interesting and chatty about their proposed walks for the next day. I don't recall hearing any Scottish accents though. I did ask the Hullabaloos (young men old enough to know better) to quieten down or go along to the common room if they wanted to be noisy when other people wanted to sleep in the "Quiet Zone", but my polite request was not very successful. Next time, if there ever is one, I'm doing the ferocious granny/bellowing Akela act. Growl! I noticed they kept their heads down when I passed them in the corridors next morning though. Perhaps there's hope for them to become civilised yet.
          So, Sunday morning we headed out coffeewards again. I had brought some coffee bags that I found at home lurking in a cupboard, only to discover that they were decaffeinated no bloody use and too bitter for our taste anyway, so I wrote on the lid: "Decaffeintated. Blergh! Help yourself" and left them on one of the YH kitchen worktops. They vanished pronto. Freecycling at its best. We had teabags too but although there's supposed to be a similar amount of caffeine somehow it never seems like that. Strange really, when I went nearly twenty-five of my adult years without drinking coffee and being addicted to tea. Apparently it's for the caffeine that people drink Diet Coke. Funny animals, humans. Do other animals do drugs like us? It wouldn't surprise me. Blackbirds certainly loved the gin-laced sloes I chucked on the compost heap once!

          We set off in search of the public hall at Glenlivet. I'd printed directions. What could go wrong? This is where you start laughing at my incompetence. To begin with, I'd taken the event venue address from the 2012 contestant application form instead of the 2013 one (-1 point). The 2013 one, though supposedly a pdf, wouldn't open (I think I can have +1 for that). Well, that should have been okay because the organiser emailed me the correct address twice. But, oh dear, I'd got the googlemaps directions to the wrong one (-2). When young men who didn't look like archers (you can tell!) started arriving at the venue where we were, we began to suspect something. When they started putting football boots on, we began to wonder. Mr Toad spoke to them. They thought perhaps we could shoot arrows alongside their football game. "You might have to duck a lot," said Mr T. Unfortunately, what I had not done is print the email with the correct address (-1. Seriously negative now!). We could have headed to Aberlour in search of the place but we would have been late for the event registration by then. I felt a Right Charlie! All that way and no archery event! Mr Toad and I have now both managed to miss an outdoor archery tournament: him in February by mistaking the date, me in March by mistaking the venue. I'm not keeping the score any more; you get the drift!

          We photographed a mangelwurzle slicer outside Glenlivet Public Hall. At the time we didn't know what it was but some people in Norfolk know about such things and told us. Thank you, Norfolks!

Mangel slicer

We went back along the road to the old packhorse bridge over the Livet.

The Toadlet on the Livet packhorse bridge

It used to have three arches but the farthest one was destroyed by floods in 1829. Toadlet and I explored it and inspected it by going on it and then read the notice asking people not to.

Oops!

We went to Loch Garten in search of ospreys. They don't arrive until late March. So we went to Loch Morlich to eat our picnic. A piercing, perishing wind was blowing straight across the loch off the snowy peaks to just where we were sitting.

Loch Morlich 3 March 2013

Looking south across Loch Morlich

Toadlet shouted Home! so home we headed — by the dead end diversion route as it happens. You guessed it – I was driving. Toadlet had faith in the iPhone satnav app that we wise old ones didn't have. On the plus side we saw some parts of Scotland that are very different from the part where we live – more rounded mountains for a start; Rannoch Station at the dead end – and which we probably wouldn't have chosen to explore except by accident. Bonny country but not where we wanted to go. Once we got off the winding roads Mr Toad took over the driving (he drives faster than I do so my driving is better for preventing car sickness on the windy bits (that's wyndy, not windy)) and we sped back along the north side of Loch Tay, once again in known territory, and so, eventually, home to the Boggy Brae.

Toadlet mentioned maths homework. We said Oh, pish! tell the teacher some wild goose chase story about having to accompany us to Speyside for an archery contest that didn't happen, and if s/he suggests you should have taken your homework to the youth hostel you can mention the Hullabaloo skiers, and then all about being driven along the north side of Loch Rannoch instead of Loch Tay, and having to trundle around the base of Schiehallion to get back on route, and the wild goose chase thus taking much longer than expected.
We think she did the homework on the school bus on Monday morning, which is probably what she would have done anyway.