DARTH

Okay, so this is going to be one of those catch up posts that seem to happen round these parts with too much regularity. The main problem I’ve had has been work being rather busy – which isn’t a bad thing, in fact quite the opposite but it has meant motivation for processing photos from our holiday in August and writing posts on here has been rather low. Things are easing up as we are firming up the latest release of our software and I’ve been experimenting with going to the gym of a morning instead of evening with the intention of freeing up more time in the evening after work. Which is just as well as I have plans to get my professional blog up and running as well as starting a photo blog to help me improve my photography skills.

Way back in August we were off on holiday, this year it involved staying in the UK as there were some places we wanted to go to and it tied in nicely with Cropredy. First stop was Tickton in Yorkshire to spend a couple of days with Nina. Of course no sooner had we arrived, but the three of us plus Nina’s pal Jackie were heading back north a bit to Masham for a weekend of camping, drinking Theakstons and a spot of walking. It was an organised thing with a group that Jackie is a member of. We took over the bottom corner of the campsite, and I’m sure there were more tents than should have been there, still we found room for our two. The main event was an evening trip to the Theakston Brewery. Now with most of these sorts of things you get one maybe two beers as part of the tour and then pay for the rest this was not the case. Beer was included all evening no additional monies needed to change hands, either before or after the brewery tour – oh joy of joys. They even let me have go at pouring my own, never having pulled a pint before in my life I thought I did okay. On the Sunday some of us headed off for a walk around the Yorkshire countryside.

Continue reading It’s been busy round these parts

This was something that I’d been looking forward to since I’d bought the tickets last year. We’d been lucky to get to see them as we’d lucked out on getting tickets for any of the indoor arena gigs. This would have meant a trip down south as they never came to Scotland on this leg, but I had a funny feeling they’d be at Hampden in the summer and lo and behold they did. So it came to pass that Graham and I did head through to Glasgow early afternoon to grab a couple of pints in the city centre. We had hoped to find a pub with proper beer and food, but unfortunately neither of us knowing Glasgow that well we were thwarted in this part of our mission, so ended up just having a drink before heading out to Mount Florida. We grabbed a chippy and tried to get a beer before heading in but we were really too late in heading out this way for that as there was a queue outside the one we were heading to, so inside we went for some over-priced lager.

This did mean we could scope the standing area and get a decent spot to watch from, which we did. First up were The Answer from Northern Ireland. I’d ben quite keen to see these guys having heard them a fair bit on Planet Rock, but to be honest I was a little underwhelmed. I’ll probably go and seem them again, but at an indoor venue as the sound didn’t seem that good. This was especially disappointing as I’d heard how good they were live. Next up were The Subways who were a replacement for Thin Lizzy who had pulled out a the last minute because of an injury to their drummer. Now I’d seen them before at TiTP, and to be honest thought them an odd replacement. Don’t get me wrong I think they are pretty good, just not what I would expect as the main support act for AC/DC. Unfortunately on their performance that day I’m not too sure too many folk would have been rushing out and buying their albums. Despite the rushing about the stage, their performance seemed less manic than when I’d seen them last at TiTP. Anyway enough about the support, onto the main course.

The Answer

The Subways

It is pretty poor show that this was the first time I’d been to see the mighty AC/DC, still we were here and boy do they put on a good show, despite their advancing years. From the opening riff of Rock n’ Roll Train to the closing of the set with For Those About to Rock, it was just incredible. The layout of the stage and Hampden’s relatively small dimensions meant we weren’t too far away from Brian and Angus doing their thing on the walkway and latterly Angus on his own riser, I even grabbed some video of that.

Angus & Brian on Walkway

The biggest highlight for me was You Shook Me All Night Long, it is one of my all time favourite tracks by anyone not just AC/DC. There were tracks I’d wished they’d played, but then it’s a bit like going to a Rush gig they have just so much material to try and pick from they can’t play everything you want to hear. The new stuff went down really well (with me anyway), but I did read some comments online about people moaning that they’d played too many tracks from the new album (they played 5) – but this was the Black Ice tour after all I’m not sure what people expected. Anyway as someone once said “you can’t please all the people all the time”, well trust me I had a massive grin on my face so I think I could be considered to have been pleased.

And a big thank you to Adele for coming and picking us up at the end of the night. The original plan had been to get the train back to Edinburgh and for me to kip down at Graham’s, but when I checked the timings I realised it would have been tight to make that last train and getting the bus back would have meant arriving in Edinburgh at around 1.30 am. She’d offered to come through instead of me taking the car and then not being able to have a drink, so that was very handy. As it turned out we could have made that last train as we managed to grab a taxi back into town, but sods law if we’d been relying on that we wouldn’t have got one.

There are a few more photos here, and I may have check through the rest to see if any are good enough to be uploaded.

Last month (the 25th June to be precise) we made our annual visit to the Scottish Real Ale Festival at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. As some other people needed to be up early on the Saturday and because Adele was in town anyway we went on the Thursday evening again so things weren’t too mad. Now they may have done this last year I can’t remember, but this year they had names on the bars so it was (in theory at least) easier to find the beers you were looking for. The following are the beers I sampled:

Top Banana from Caledonian – I broke my own rules having this one, as it is one I’ve sampled on more than one occasion in the past. I justified it to myself as it is very difficult to find anywhere. As the name suggests it is a banana beer, not as strong a flavour as something like the Wells Banana Bread beer, but very nice all the same.

Vital Spark from Fyne – This was a darker beer. The tasting notes mention a hint of blackcurrant, but I don’t remember getting that when I had it. Still very nice though, and no sign of Para Handy either.

Dark Munro from the Highland Brewing Company – This was the champion beer of Scotland in 2007, and allowed me to have something that was like Dark Island, although not actually Dark Island. It was very good, and I certainly wouldn’t turn my nose up at it but given the choice Dark Island everytime I’m afraid.

Orkney IPA from the Highland Brewing Company – Given Deuchars IPA is my tipple of choice when out – well at least it is a good fall back in Edinburgh (and in the bars near my office in Twickenham) I am always keen to try other IPA offerings. I really like the hoppiness of a good IPA and this was one was especially quaffable. I will be keeping my eye out for it again.

Lady MacBeth from the Deeside Brewery – Yet again I was disappointed with an ale claiming to be a raspberry beer. I really do not get the breweries in this country. We have probably the best raspberries in the world in Scotland yet I’ve yet to taste a raspberry beer produced by a Scottish brewery worthy of being called a raspberry beer. Maybe I was spoiled by our trip to Canada in 2005 and the raspberry beer produced by the Amsterdam brewery in Toronto (I’d forgotten it was styled on the belgian ones), or the Belgian raspberry beers – but you’d think someone would come up with one that had a bit more raspberry flavour, or maybe that’s just me. In fact it may be something I investigate myself. I’ve been thinking about giving the whole home brewing thing a go and this might be a good place to start.

Crag’s Ale and Starboard from the Plockton Brewery – I had no idea that there even was a brewery in Plockton until I saw the festival programme and for me it was a must try. You see part of my family is from the area, and I used to spend many a happy summer staying with my Great Aunt, but enough about about my past what about the beers. Crag’s Ale was quite light, and I’m sure as I was ordering it another punter at the bar said it wasn’t very good. I wouldn’t say that at all I found it very pleasant. The Starboard was more IPAish but not as strong a taste as I would have liked. Still not a bad drink though.

Criffel IPA from Sulwath Brewers – Again another very nice example of an IPA, nice and hoppy just how I like it.

Ginger Explosion from Traditional Scottish Ales – This is one of their seasonal ales and if I’m honest I was a little bit disappointed. Others had tried this before I got there and said it was quite a strong ginger flavour, don’t get me wrong the beer was nice I just thought the ginger could have been a little more prominent, but may be that was just me. Actually despite my mini rant about raspberry beers earlier, it seems this crowd may have an answer. They seem to do a raspberry beer, Red Mist, that seems to warrant further investigation. It is also this lot that do the Aleoween that we had last year at the Guildford Arms – let’s hope that makes a re-appearance.

All in all another great year at the festival, now to track down some of the above (and ones I never got to) in the pubs.

This post sees a milestone of sorts breached, it is the 100th post. It is a little disappointing it has taken me so long to get this far, so that is something I must try and improve on.

Upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 completed at the click of a button. I still haven’t really got round all the features of 2.7 as it took me so long to decide on a new host, but the upgrade from the dashboard is superb, no more faffing about downloading and tweaking the config file before uploading again, so shout if you notice anything.

Elsewhere at chez darth things have been busy. This years growing effort has been going great guns. We’ve had much better luck starting the tomatoes and tomatillos off much earlier, so much so they are probably a month and a half ahead of where they were at the same time last year. We’ve gone for a wider range of things this year still trying to see what works best. It seems whatever we put in the barrels does really well as the onions, leeks and carrots we have in them this year are all coming along nicely – well the leeks are finished really just picking them as we need them. I had started increasing the size of the plot but time got the better of me and short of taking the turf off an piling it up I haven’t got much further, so the plan is to get the larger growing area ready for next year and prepare an area for a greenhouse.

Time is proving to be short during the week as I’ve been back at the gym. I hadn’t been for about 2.5/3 years (since we’d been at the flat) but have been enjoying going again. I try and get three nights in a week, I know I should probably be doing more, but work is also really busy at the moment. As if that wasn’t enough it’s also been getting tough to try and fit everything in at weekends lately and the next few months don’t seem to have many free either. We’ve had a couple of barbecues, been into town for drinks and/or dinner with friends at various times over the past few weekends. This next weekend sees another dinner with friends, before we have the Scottish Traditional Beer Festival and a 50th birthday party to attend the following weekend. Then I think we actually may have a free weekend – although the car is coming up for a service and we may try and get it done then. We’ve also been trying to decide on the best weekend for this years pirate party and have a couple of dates in mind and will hopefully have that decided by the end of this week.

Looking forward to the AC/DC gig at the end of the month at Hampden. Graham and I will be heading through for that, Adele decided to pass. We’ve also got Cropredy coming up in August. I’ve been trying to get out with the sole of intention of taking photos and have been failing. I did get a few shots wandering round Edinburgh last month while the car was in for it’s MOT and at the recent Bathgate Highland games I just need to sort them out. Mind you I have been wanting to set up a photo blog with then intention of forcing me to get out more and take pictures, I hope to have that sorted before we are off on holiday in August but I am also trying to set up a more professional/work related blog where I can blether about technology and what I do on a day to day basis. Then again maybe I’m trying to do too much, ah well I like to challenge myself. Best get on.

Well it had to happen, it usually does when we are on holiday – one of us started to feel unwell, me as it happens this time. This also coincided with some particularly wet weather, which wasn’t good news as today was scheduled for visiting some of the fishing villages along the south coast. The forecast did at least indicate it would brighten up later on. After breakfast we headed off anyway hoping the forecast was indeed correct.

Continue reading Cornwall – Part 3

We’d decided to head further north up the coast for some walking and after breakfast we headed off towards Crackington Haven. The walk that we’d planned wasn’t as long as the previous day (slightly less than half the distance), but it was more up and down. It was a circular walk that started at the village car-park, took us through some woods and passed a couple of farms that are mentioned in the Doomsday book, before joining the coastal path to head back toward the village. There was some stunning shoreline to gawp at, along with some moorland ponies and some wild (well we presumed they were wild) goats. The walk itself was very quiet with us not encountering anyone (other than animals) until we were on the coastal path and getting quite close to the village. The weather had started dull and overcast, but soon brightened up again into a lovely morning. We didn’t mind the shortness of the walk as we had plans for the rest of the day.

Cornish coast near Crackington Haven

Continue reading Cornwall – Part 2