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Thursday 10 June 2010

TGO back to the Crematorium (for you my lad….)

angus ploughing
Today was road walking day. First of all, after a substantial and well cooked full Scottish breakfast and a lovely poo, I walked quiet roads and country lanes to Forfar.
In Forfar, I visited a tea room and was warmly welcomed.  I’ve often found Forfar friendly before on Challenges (This sentences has been provided by the society for sentences with lots of F's in.) and today was going to be no different.
Apparently, the Maggie Hem’s landlady the previous night was one of the customer’s sister and the tea shop owner’s cousin. Its a small world innit?
I pressed on to Lethem. Lethem was supposed to be my destination for the day and I was going to try for a B&B somewhere, but after a couple of beers in Pub A, which closed suddenly, I transferred to Pub B for another cuppla sniftahs and then pressed on, it being early.
angus landscape
I’ve done this before on this route. that night I’d ended up camping in the grounds of the Angus Crematorium – a quiet spot. It was entirely possible that this would be today’s outcome too.
I invaded Friokheim (pronounced Freek’em). Pubs A and B were both closed and it started raining really heavily. I thought of waiting till Pub B opened and , maybe , getting a bed there, but the Crem called from afar and I did what I’d done previously.
I went to the village shop, stocked up on water and beer and sandwiches and beer and beer and trogged off towards the Crem, stopping only for a brief conversation with a friendly cyclist who was intent on taking pictures of a local rainbow.
I didn’t quite make it to the Crem. A forest ride beckoned and I sneaked off into the woods and found a pleasant clearing with flat grass out of sight of the busy road.
I put up the tent and gorged on beer and sandwiches and beer and whisky and bits of cheese and some blue fluff and a spider.
tgo07dunnichenhill
Later, in the half an hour of darkness that descends on Scotland at this time of year, an owl hooted very close by, and deer barked at my tent and a fox did screachy fox noises for a bit. It was the noisiest night I’d had since Spean bridge.
I don’t think Kylie would have had much chance of finding me in  there anyway.  Even if she’d been bothered to try.
Damn that gamekeeper with his off-road driving skills….

Todays pictures are courtesy of Adrian Fortune,  Mike and Marion Parsons and an old one of mine that I found from 2007. Same route at this point…

2 comments:

Adrian said...

Don't want to be pedantic old chap,but your top pic is one of mine from somewhere near Edzell.

Adrian,drinker of your whisky.

Mike Knipe said...

Whoops, sorry Adrian - I've made the appropriate edits and nobody would know if we didn't mention it....