The end of our first day.... Almost. We're at the pub (surprise surprise) recovering after 11 miles, a good few pints of beer and a huuuge curry dinner!
But to rewind a bit... Perhaps I was too quick to praise BA the other day- our rescheduled flight was late by nearly an hour- so although we all left home between 10 and 11am, we didn't get into our hotel until 7pm!
And what an interesting place! Only cost us just over £13 pp but we had quite a bit of room and a full Scottish breakfast.... You just had to ignore the strangely sloping staircase and the damp smell throughout ;-)
So after dumping our bags we headed out on the town and ticked off a couple of real ale pubs. We found two with live music, which was nice, and the night finished with Jim and Stephan delightfully sampling some locally prepared "two jugs". Tis great how people are so talkative in scotland- have been talking to many randoms! At least they've been talking back ;-) Well, it's mostly good, apart from the fact that the beggars are more confident too!
B: gii us a poond
J: sorry, what did you say?
B: GII US A POOND!
J: err... sorry I don't have a pound to give you
B: yeah yi do, gii us a poond or I'll slit your throats!
(which is about the time that Jim and I buggered off... he may have actually had an actual knife in his pocket- thought it wasn't worth hanging round to find out!)
So the walk? We had quite a slack first day. We arrived at Milngavie at about 11:30, and took photos at the starting line for a while before starting off. We'd
left it so late that the discussion almost immediately was "will the lunch pub still be serving?"... Quite concerning as us hikers need much food!
In typical Sam style, I barely know anything about where we're going on this trip. I was looking at the map on Saturday and noticed that we walked really near Kate's house (whom, my diligent readers may remember, I visited in Blanefields about 18 months ago). I called her just before lunch and then we were off on a 1 mile detour to her home town! Despite nearly losing Stephan in a ditch as we were bush bashing our way, we ended up in the Blaine Valley Inn for a Sunday roast! Was really nice to catch up with Kate too- shouldn't be too hard to convince her that a visit to London will be quite a good way to spend some of the summer!
Kate dropped us back on the trail and we were off again! Apart from a slight detour for another pint in the afternoon, we arrived at our wigwam at 7pm.
So... I started writing this after we'd had our curry with Ian from Leicester... but now it's tomorrow! We've just finished brekky after an hours walk- but that's a story for another entry :-)
Posted by Sam at June 12, 2005 10:22 AM