eBothy Blog

I’ve been reading about clouds for while now in the excellent The Cloudspotter’s Guide, am a follower of the The Cloud Appreciation Society and have been studying the surface charts for ages, to get an idea of what the weather will do, ahead of trips into the mountains and as I was working from home the other day I managed to nip out now and then to follow the progression of a warm front preceding a depression moving in from the west. I was expecting the classic sequence for a rise in air temperature:

Cirrus -> Cirrostratus -> Altostratus -> Nimbostratus -> Stratus -> Stratocumulus -> Cumulus

where the signs of approaching bad weather are heralded by Cirrus, which eventually joins up, spreads, lowers, thickens, rains, eases, rises, breaks up and disperses. The surface chart showed a depression coming in from the Atlantic so I settled down to some heavy duty Java programming but kept an eye on the weather:

http://producten.hema.nl/

wait a few seconds for the action to start…

I’m running short on freeze dried food for camping, having used Expedition Foods for a while and the even better Turmat on my ML assessment. I just love the porridge with strawberries. It’s hard to put into words the ecstatic feeling one gets from munching on a hot bag of porridge and strawberries on a cold, wet, high camp in the Cairngorms, after most of the previous night spent out on Beinn Macdui in a screaming gale and rainfest. Well worth the cost. (more…)

Stoirmeil a nochd
agus Gealach a’dearrsadh
bho sgothan dubha

(stormy tonight/and a moon shining/from dark clouds)

what is Gaiku?

I had an old friend staying for the Easter weekend, up for a Corbett bagging session and with the forecast predicting heavy snow and gale force winds it was an ideal opportunity to get some Winter ML logbook experience. We intended to go up Garbh Bheinn, starting at the head of Loch Ainort at the wonderfully named Eas nam Bruadaran (waterfall of dreams), which flows out of Coire nam Bruadaran (corrie of dreams). I don’t know how this area got its name but it’s a a rather large bog and the walk up the corrie to Marsco can be hard going in wet weather. However, our route was up Druim Eadar da Choire (the ridge between two corries) and up the north ridge of Garbh Bheinn (rough hill). I’d been up this way in summer and knew that the 489m top was a beautiful spot to linger and soak up the views of the Cuillin ridge and it was a nice grassy Alp, in contrast to the upper part of the north ridge which was bare rock and scree. (more…)

I was reading about Haiku and thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to write Haiku in Gaelic? It’d be the same format of 5-7-5 syllables (ok, they’re not really syllables in Japanese but in this case they are). So I’ve come up with Gaiku (Gaelic Haiku) and here’s the first one:

Bha mi air an traigh
trath anns a’mhadainn an dè
coimhead air nan tonn

(I was on the beach / early in the morning yesterday / watching the waves)

I was in the Co-op in Broadford today, otherwise known as the Naked Dick Turpin Emporium. Why? Well, it’s daylight robbery and mostly bare of anything useful. The Co-op prices are way above any of their competitors on the mainland as there are none on the island and they effectively have a monopoly, although Lidl are holding a public meeting in Portree about plans for a new shop. But that’s not the story I want to tell today. Today I had a glimpse of a very different world. A world where people with nothing better to do, sit in the carpeted corridors of government and make up novel uses for everyday products. Or perhaps it was Co-op policy. I’m not sure so I might email them, just out of curiosity. (more…)

We had a nice bimble up Beinn Tianavaig on Sunday (16th), after being very lazy and not getting up in time to make for Blaven. The forecast was for 40mph gusts, which is fine for up here at this time of year but it would also have meant Dawn putting on the plastics and crampons as we’ve got a load of hard as iron snow on the tops at the moment. Ideal winter ML logbook stuff but we just fancied a nice day out as it was sunny. So we made for Beinn Tianavaig, just south of Portree. (more…)

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