With a few details..? 17 10 7 (18) 25 1 29
So beginning in the autumn of 2013 with 87 Munros remaining the figure after this last trip is 29 and during the last 5 years since selling my yacht i have notched up a total of 74. Last year owing to ill health when i only collected 3 new hills for the whole year during my autumn visit which says on average with good health i have collected almost 18 each year which suggests that should my health continue as good as this year i may finish the whole 282 by this time in two years time..?
During the same period it is difficult to say how many new friends i also got to collect but let us try to count just a few of them..? So after going through my digital camera files for the autumn of 2013 to my surprise i turned up pics of 33 new people and i can tell you straight off there is no way i shall have so many for my latest visit less than a month ago. Of course in those far off days of the autumn of 2013 i was still active not only on Face-b but also on MySpace and it was my custom if i met people on the hills or wherever and exchanged conversation with them i would take their pic and promise to post it together with the rest of my pics on MySpace. This harmless practice therefore required no commitment from them to do anything they were averse to doing and undoubtedly in some cases they would never make the effort to visit MySpace(s) at all whilst if they themselves were interested in climbing the same hills they might well visit to see the display of my holiday pics etc... On occasion therefore i can tell you with good reason some people would visit again and again: so if you ever wonder what all the people carrying smart phones are doing when sitting on a bus or train some of them may be so engaged checking on people's pic parades, like mine, on F-book MySpace or wherever..?
This first pic then shows a couple whose names now elude me but who in a conversation in the Common Room at the first hostel i visited in the autumn of 2013 told me of Bob Scott's bothy just an hour's walk from the Linn of Dee which later in my holiday i would be happy to visit as my second bothy of the holiday in which i spent a total of 4 nights staying in bothies: for the most part staying alone as i avoided the weekends when i might find them full of weekend trippers for the last time i had used bothies at all was in the 1980's whilst still living in UK.
This next pic also taken 13 9 25 was of a guy i met at my first bothy not himself staying there but staying in the lodge adjacent the bothy on an estate given over to deer hunting in the autumn, a friendly guy who was resident for the time being alone who readily invited me over for a beer which i was happy to agree to after my several hours' exertions to get there pulling my shopping trolley with it's somewhat lightened load of sleeping bag cooking utensils etc but not all the extra clean clothes i'd brought along for the 2 week trip: these i had stored at the youth hostel to collect upon my return from the wilder places...
Next morning 13 9 26 as i was setting out on my walk for 3 new hills i hadn't gone very far before i was to bump into this couple whom i learned lived in the area but who originally hailed from France though now at least for part of the time the man had estate duties i needn't go into in too much detail...She i recall was called Michelle because of my difficulties remembering any names...
Next off coming against me this pair of very attractive young ladies i was able to calculate must have been up at the crack of dawn for their walk over the hills to where we met and they too hailed from a continental Europe i recall:
And so you will begin to understand the kinds of stimuli that fill up one’s days in what otherwise could be a very solitary occupation: of course on some days one gets to meet very few people and nowadays I am no longer in the habit of taking their pics unless something extraordinary suggests a pic would be a nice memento. Like for example on my most recent holiday I walked my first fine day from 8:15 in the morning of Tuesday 17 9 19 for a hill I had calculated would take me most of the day-light hours of the day in question when apart from a few estate workers in cars I saw no-one the whole day long apart from a couple who were staying high in the hills in an isolated cottage: 2 people who hailed from Wakefield in Yorkshire the male of whom I met on my outward journey and his wife whom I met as I was returning in late afternoon fairly assured I should make it back in time before darkness fell, and when they invited me to join them for an afternoon cup of Yorkshire tea: an elderly couple probably born within 10 years of myself and therefore someone for whom ageism was not an issue, hahaha
During the same period it is difficult to say how many new friends i also got to collect but let us try to count just a few of them..? So after going through my digital camera files for the autumn of 2013 to my surprise i turned up pics of 33 new people and i can tell you straight off there is no way i shall have so many for my latest visit less than a month ago. Of course in those far off days of the autumn of 2013 i was still active not only on Face-b but also on MySpace and it was my custom if i met people on the hills or wherever and exchanged conversation with them i would take their pic and promise to post it together with the rest of my pics on MySpace. This harmless practice therefore required no commitment from them to do anything they were averse to doing and undoubtedly in some cases they would never make the effort to visit MySpace(s) at all whilst if they themselves were interested in climbing the same hills they might well visit to see the display of my holiday pics etc... On occasion therefore i can tell you with good reason some people would visit again and again: so if you ever wonder what all the people carrying smart phones are doing when sitting on a bus or train some of them may be so engaged checking on people's pic parades, like mine, on F-book MySpace or wherever..?
This first pic then shows a couple whose names now elude me but who in a conversation in the Common Room at the first hostel i visited in the autumn of 2013 told me of Bob Scott's bothy just an hour's walk from the Linn of Dee which later in my holiday i would be happy to visit as my second bothy of the holiday in which i spent a total of 4 nights staying in bothies: for the most part staying alone as i avoided the weekends when i might find them full of weekend trippers for the last time i had used bothies at all was in the 1980's whilst still living in UK.
This next pic also taken 13 9 25 was of a guy i met at my first bothy not himself staying there but staying in the lodge adjacent the bothy on an estate given over to deer hunting in the autumn, a friendly guy who was resident for the time being alone who readily invited me over for a beer which i was happy to agree to after my several hours' exertions to get there pulling my shopping trolley with it's somewhat lightened load of sleeping bag cooking utensils etc but not all the extra clean clothes i'd brought along for the 2 week trip: these i had stored at the youth hostel to collect upon my return from the wilder places...
Next morning 13 9 26 as i was setting out on my walk for 3 new hills i hadn't gone very far before i was to bump into this couple whom i learned lived in the area but who originally hailed from France though now at least for part of the time the man had estate duties i needn't go into in too much detail...She i recall was called Michelle because of my difficulties remembering any names...
Next off coming against me this pair of very attractive young ladies i was able to calculate must have been up at the crack of dawn for their walk over the hills to where we met and they too hailed from a continental Europe i recall:
And so you will begin to understand the kinds of stimuli that fill up one’s days in what otherwise could be a very solitary occupation: of course on some days one gets to meet very few people and nowadays I am no longer in the habit of taking their pics unless something extraordinary suggests a pic would be a nice memento. Like for example on my most recent holiday I walked my first fine day from 8:15 in the morning of Tuesday 17 9 19 for a hill I had calculated would take me most of the day-light hours of the day in question when apart from a few estate workers in cars I saw no-one the whole day long apart from a couple who were staying high in the hills in an isolated cottage: 2 people who hailed from Wakefield in Yorkshire the male of whom I met on my outward journey and his wife whom I met as I was returning in late afternoon fairly assured I should make it back in time before darkness fell, and when they invited me to join them for an afternoon cup of Yorkshire tea: an elderly couple probably born within 10 years of myself and therefore someone for whom ageism was not an issue, hahaha
Have a good day everyone and thank you for the enthusiastic reception my first two blogs in this series appears to have garnered..?
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