Well snow in a normal winter can be a pretty rare commodity..........so when you have it as it is now, it would be criminal not to use it! So Ellie and I did our duty and went back up to the Lecht and worked our way round all the runs, including the Buzzard and the Falcon (Harrier wasn't working). Clear blue sky and no wind, absolutely alpine. Its pretty tough, but someone has to do it.
Even bumped into our old friend Sam Shaw, pulling a few mean Telemark turns himself!
Lost track of what we did on which day now but did have a wonderful walk round the coastal path to Ardmaddy. The path is extremely overgrown now and quite a scramble with a lot of trees having fallen across the path over the lat few years. Views were stunning. Even had some time to stop for a quick round of Pooh Sticks at the bridge at the top end of the Ardmaddy Gardens.
And of course only a really cruel father would take a picture of his daughters as they leant over the bridge playing Pooh Sticks
The first Sunday of the holiday saw us taking a trip across to Easdale for a bite of lunch and some stone skimming (well we do have an ex-world champion in the family). Unfortunately the ex-champion decided to slip whilst trying to re-capture her winning form and ended up sitting in a rock-pool. We decided to repair to the Puffer bar to allow her to thaw out and enjoyed a throughly unhealthy lunch including venison burger and chips (consumed with mayonnaise and tomato ketchup).
Suitably fueled and Ellie sufficiently dried we headed off for a walk round the island including some serious skimming practice!
The Great British Bake Off has a lot to answer for! The days of having a simple sponge cake are long gone! If there aren't several different colours and flavours in the one cake it just doesn't cut it! So here are a couple of highlights from the holiday baking! Isobel's rainbow cake and Julie's slightly more toned down orange and lemon cake, both wonderful to taste!
Not satisfied with kayaking in the morning, the girls for some strange reason decided that it was just the right weather for a spot of swimming!! Back into kayaks and across to the pontoon across the sound, this time clad in wetsuits rather than dry suits (With the exception of dad who stayed firmly in a dry suit!). And just in case you don't beleive it, here is the evidence that at least one daughter (you can guess which!) was mad enough to swim in an air temperature of 6C!
The other daughter was a little more sensible and stuck to kayaking and giving her big sister some encouragement.
Thursday saw Isobel and I head out for an early morning kayak. Isobel is off to the Ardeche in June and part of the trip involves kayaking 21km down the Ardeche gorge over 2 days. She was keen to get some training in so we had several trips over the Easter holiday, the longest being down Seil Sound round to Ardmaddy and then across the sound as far as Cuan and then back again, about 8km in total.
Here are a few photo's.
Tuesday saw Ellie and I heading up to Glencoe ski area for even more skiing. We had tried Aonach Mor on Easter Sunday but it wasn't great so we headed up to Glencoe to try our luck there.
Wow........alpine conditions, superb snow, clear blue sky and views that were nothing short of spectacular. The one above is looking across the Mamores to Ben Nevis in the distance.
We had a fabulous day's skiing, we skied all the main runs and Ellie went right up to the summit and skied some quite steep runs of the summit without batting an eyelid, dad just about managed to keep up. What was supposed to be a quick mornings skiing finally finished at 3.30, both wrecked! Fish and chips at the Oban Fish and Chip shop beckoned. It did not disappoint.
Easter Saturday was cold but sunny so we had a nice leisurely walk round Arduaine Garden, not many rhododendrons in bloom yet thanks to the cold temperatures. Having built up a good appetite we repaired to the Crafty Kitchen in Ardfern for a well earned lunch followed by a trip round the yacht chandlery for Dad, who was very restrained and only walked out with a new pair of sailing gloves!
Well it just never seems to stop snowing up here. Good Friday saw us start the Easter hols with a stop off at the Lecht for some skiing on the way to the cottage. Absolutely fantastic conditions, just look at how much of the snow fences are actually showing, that means there is about 3 ft of snow base and further down the runs the fences have dissappeared completely. The weather was alpine, freezing temperatures, no wind and blue skies in-between the snow showers. We were first on the ski-lifts at 8 and finally gave up at 1pm after 5 hours solid skiing! There was some serious sun tanning of the few bits of exposed skin (nose and cheeks).
Snow conditions were nothing short of superb with acres of powder and packed powder snow. Heavenly! Here is a video of Ellie skiing the Buzzard.
