catandsteven.co.uk

Day 12 … “Cat Gets Sick and We Meet The Fish Ladder”

July 14th, 2006

Hi,

Todays blog post comes to you from Pitlochery which is on the A9 south kind of half way between Aviemore and Sterling.

Ok… today… from the top…
9:00am … Those evil little b*****ds (Tweenies) wake us up again and we begin to hatch a plan to rid the globe of all Tweenies, Tweenie tunes, lookalikes, toys and adult-sized tweenie-style fettish items from dubious catalogues and internet sites and other evil little creatures.
10:00am … breakfast arrives… hmmm… someone needs to teach chef what breakfast really means for the under 60’s.
12:00pm … drag our sorry asses from the hotel room into the Camper (this took a little while as packing included plates, cuttlery, food, a well-stocked bar and TWO carrier-bags of sweets and crisps).
12:10pm … checkout… and whatever you do… don’t mention the broken toilet seat… lid snapped off… oops!
12:15pm … in Clive making a swift exit… ok…. made it through passport control on the gatehouse and we’re off

From Aviemore we headed down the A9 with every intention of making it down to Sterling to see some stuff there or maybe to vere off to take in Glamis Castle on the way… but on the way… “Cat got real sick”(cold and blue and stuff… scary) and needed a nap and some sustinence so we pulled off in a layby(ooer missus!) and Steven cooked and there were no fires at all… for those of you who know Steven’s record for cooking and kitchen fires then you’ll know this is good… his list of disasters include… the time he cooked cheese on toast and the toaster burst into flames which set fire to the boiler and this cost a toaster and a boiler… the time the potato caught fire set fire to the microwave and the plate it was on shattered… and the many many times he has tried to cook microwave popcorn and still can’t manage it without the bag bursting into flames… oooh and the recent bacon with added melted plastic bits incident.

Anyhow… the food(veggie fajitas and ginger cake and custard) and couple of cups of tea did the trick and Cat was up and on here feet again within hours… we actually enjoyed sitting on the layby chatting all afternoon as it was a bit of time-out from travelling and time for chats and stuff.

Ok… eventually we reached Pitlochery and found a campsite, parked Clive-O up for the night in pitch number 23 and took off into town(street) for a beer and some food.

On the way we took time to take in the “Fish Ladder” which is an ingenious invention that allows migratary salmon to ‘climb’ up and over the dam that stands in Pitlochery which houses the Hydro Elecric Power Station. The way that this works is simply there are MANY concrete ‘tanks’ next to eachother and linked by underwater tunnels starting at the lower water level and each raised 18 inches from the last that ’snake’ up towards the top of the Dam…. the last ‘tank’ is at the same level as the top water level behind the Dam… the Salmon actually use this and about 5400 migratary salmon use the ladder each season…. lol… catch our next report on John Cravens Country File.

There were tons of salmon jumping which was a cool sight and as the sun was going down we took in the sunset over the loch.

From here we went into town(street) and went for a few JDs and tried to get food… hmmm… we ended up in an Indian as this was the only place open after 10:00pm yet again… had starters and popadums and then decided to take main course back to Clive-O for eating later as we were a bit full by this point.

Indian Takeaway smells cool in a small space like Clive-O (hmmm…. honest)… there is a photo of Steven eating his ‘fairly hot chefs special sauce’ in the photos.

Ok… enough already… time for sleep… so check out todays photos here and we’ll catch you tomorrow… C+S

Entry Filed under: Our Wedding, Trips