The holiday we had went nicely and maybe a little too fast. We spent a week in Santorini, Greece and a couple of days in Athens, too. It was nice to be able to spend some time with our girlfriends, chill and rest our aching muscles. But still, as skiers we were already hoping to get back to what we do best, skiing.
We arrived at Edinburgh late in the evening and Ape was already waiting for us at the airport. Ape flew to Scotland from Spain, where he was filming with his sponsors for a week or so. After a nice get-together moment we headed to the airport shuttle, which was destined to take us to the city center of Edinburgh.
When we got to the center it was already 1 o'clock in the morning, so we simply took the first hotel we saw that was open, and checked in. After that we ran to the nearest hamburger-place for some late supper, because the flight meals really don’t hold your hunger, haha.
In the morning boys wanted to go out and find a gym, whereas I decided to go film some fill-footage from a nearby castle. I met some nice people and went to have a pint at a local pub. After boys had had their exercise done, they went to find us a rental car. They made a deal that we can pick the car up the next morning.
Later the night we went to visit this one old whiskey bar. It's unbelievable how cheap the whiskeys are in Scotland. We tried a few different ones and all though most of them were 18 years old, they cost only a mere 5 Euros a shot. After some tingling sensations for our tongues, we headed back to the hotel. We decided to stay another night in the hotel, since it was next to the rental place and the price was quite ok.
The next morning we had an early start and after picking up the car, we started heading to Inverness, the so-called capital of the highlands, almost straight away. If I thought that Edinburgh was beautiful with the old castle-like buildings and all, the countryside of Scotland is even more amazing. Huge plateaus with tens of different colors and the weather changes every two minutes. It was kind of fun to travel with a car in this sort of environment. You constantly just keep gasping about everything you see, so you really don't feel the duration of the drive.
After a couple of hours of gasping and wowing at everything on the side of the road, we finally got to Inverness.
The first thing - as always - was to find a place to stay. After a few long shots we found a small hotel just next to the river that goes through the city. It kind of reminded me of the old hotel in an English TV-series called “Fawlty towers”. It had an old staircase, old wooden reception desk and a dining- and lounge room on the first floor, just like in the series. The owners were really nice and it was a pleasant place to stay for the next few nights.
The next morning we really didn’t have that much of a plan, and we simply just went cruising around the neighborhood with our car. We drove out from the city and went to check out Loch Ness, a lake that probably everyone knows about from the old monster stories. Not much to see there, except the huge waves on the lake. The lake is really deep and it holds the record of the deepest fresh water fish ever caught, and it was from 700 something feet. Anyway it has depth and length to create huge waves and I can say that probably because of the Scottish weather the weather for fishing is bad for 300 days a year.
After this we headed to the highlands to find some locations for filming, and boy did we find some. Let’s just say that the country, the air and everything is so clean that the nature is just in this amazing state in Scotland. There is hair growing on the branches of the trees and the land is filled with moss. Wild deer and grouses are commonly seen, it is just plain unbelievable.
The next couple of days went by just driving around the Inverness area, but there is one thing that we did in the end of the second day that needs to be mentioned.
In every place we tried something new to put in our mouth you know and we didn’t want Scotland to make any exception in that one. It was kind of a hard place for Blumi with his week stomach when we ordered Haggis from a local restaurant. After a really short while we had three scoops of stuff in front of us, one of neeps (turnip mush), tatties (potato mush) and the haggis all in nice ice cream ball shaped piles. After a little encouraging from me and Ape, Blumi agreed to taste the dish. No crazy impressions, no gagging, nothing. He liked it, a bummer I say. Of course we all tried it, and I really have to say that I like haggis. It tastes like liver and that is it.
Tourists seek for sights and skiers ski. That is what we thought after three days of just hanging out in the Inverness. It was time to head to the mountains and do some real shizzle. We decided to drive to Glencoe after some rumors of good skiing that might exist there.
We got to the down station at around noon and the resort was closed. Luckily the owner happened to be there and we went to have a cup of coffee and a chat with him. The resort was closed due to some high winds and in Scotland high winds really means fast blowing gusts powerful enough to move a man from the side of the mountain to Maui in Hawai’i. The wind was just 140 miles an hour that day, so it is just like 65 meters per second, not bad. You kind of can agree with the lift operators that they don’t want to open the lifts with that kind of winds, haha. After the short interview with the owner we drove back to Inverness for one more night in our beautiful riverside hotel.
Next morning it was time to do the hula. We woke up really early and our owner was more than kind to bill us in the evening and to make us something to go for the breakfast in the morning. She packed us some yogurt, bread, juice and water, more than enough for us to get some fuel in the machine. We arrived to the ski center at around 9 and it was still closed. It had been snowing and drifting a lot on the top, so we had to wait for the guys to dig the lifts from the snow.
After many cups of coffee and a stinging numbness in our asses it was finally time to go skiing. It was 11 o’clock and after two hours of waiting there was finally some movement at the lift station. We quickly packed all of our stuff and headed to the lift. The first lift is a chair that actually only goes to the root of the actual ski resort. From there you have to take a mellow poma up and then you will get to the real lifts.
Something still needs to be said about the first lift. Blumi went alone and we followed him with Ape a few chairs behind him. On the way up we saw some pretty strong gusts on the top section of the lift with snow moving in tremendous speeds, but as the lift was working we thought that we’ll be fine. Well, nothing bad happened, but when we came to the level where we saw the gusts I thought that I was going to die or something. The wind pushed the chair totally sideways and the wind was probably blowing at 30-40 m/s, nice. I thought that this is going to make a one filming day to be remembered.
First thing we needed to do was to get me a working avalanche beacon. I broke mine filming in Bulgaria and the plan was to borrow one from the pisteurs of Glencoe. We met the guys on their hut at the mid station and agreed to do an interview with them and they were more than happy to lend me a beacon for the following couple of days.
We started the filming from a small gully just under the pisteurs hut, but to be honest there really wasn’t anything to film. The weather closed in sooner than we thought and you basically couldn’t see anything and the snow wasn’t that good either.
So we went back to the pisteurs hut to wait for the weather to clear up, but it never happened. After a few hours of waiting we headed back down to our car and towards Fort William, the biggest town nearby.
In Fort William there really isn’t that much to do, but it is close to the resort (about 30 kilometers) and it is easy to find cheap and decent accommodation from there. We drove around the area and picked the most interesting looking house from the side of the road. The road side is full of Bed and Breakfast-places and the prices vary in between 25 and 40 Euros per night. The feeling in ours was nice and warm, and after our happy owner of our house had given us a room we went to find something for dinner. After some nice local mega-burgers we headed straight back to our B&B and went to sleep and to dream of a better tomorrow.
It was a better tomorrow. It had snowed a lot during the last night and we had all of our hopes up that this was going to be the day. We drove up to the resort and went straight up just to see that the weather wasn’t any better. Ape’s toe was killing him, so the day kind of had some bad signs straight from the beginning.
All though it was foggy and everything me and Blumi decided to go and check out one of the more steep lines on the top section of the mountain called Spring Run. All the runs in Glencoe have funny names such as Rannoch Glades, Mugs Alley, Fly Paper to start with. The last mentioned is actually one of the steepest ski resort-runs in Europe. The Spring Run that we went to check out wasn’t that steep and the only trouble we had was to find it in the heavy fog. Finally we found the run and started slowly ski it down. The more down we got the better the visibility got and after a little while we were able to charge the last part of the run quite fast.
After this we went to check out Ape at the pisteurs hut and to film an interview of one of the guys and the pisteurs of Glencoe.
While filming the interview we figured that all though the weather was full of..ummm..snow, we had to start filming something. Just next to the pisteurs hut, there is an old one man chair-lift and just under it some nice lines with some rocks to give you a little contrast to ski with. We all got some pretty satisfying runs from there and we called it a day. The later of the evening was to be something else.
After the full day of waiting and some filming we went to meet the local guys at the down stations café over a soda and they invited us to their lodge for some dinner and a couple of beers. Of course we accepted their invitation and drove to the lodge maybe a 20 kilometers from the resort to the wrong direction. At this point it was already snowing heavily and Ape started to have some second thoughts about the whole visit, but as the guys had promised to accommodate us in case of too much snow on the road we carried on.
The Lodge actually belongs to the Ski Club of Glencoe and the members can rent a bed for just a 7 Pounds a night. This is something that some other ski clubs could take a hint from. The Lodge was full of people and surprisingly of all ages. The youngest little skier was probably just a little over two and the oldest man in the house was 85 years old. The older couple actually had skied in Glencoe for over 50 years and they still go to the Fly Paper on a good day and ski down the 45 degree steep run together. That is something to think about and we thought that this lovely couple had to be interviewed. After a couple of beers and really nice meal it was time for us to thank everyone and start our sketchy ride back home.
The road back to Fort William was actually better than we thought thanks to the great amount of snowplows maintaining the roads around Glencoe. We got back to Fort William at around three in the morning and we were totally exhausted. Luckily the next day was planned to be spent visiting a local whiskey distillery and resting before the next day’s skiing as the weather was supposed to clear up a little bit.
We went to visit this one distillery caller Ben Nevis, but the guy inside who we asked about the filming didn’t see how travelling and whiskey goes together and we didn’t get permission to film. So the day kind was completely *peep*, because of this one idiot and we headed back home to do some re-search for the upcoming days.
The next day we headed back to the ski resort with high hopes and the weather actually seemed really nice. The forecast had promised partly cloudy and just a little wind, so our expectations were really high for the day. When we got up, we got crushed again. All though the weather was fine, the last night’s winds had blown all the snow probably all the way to Norway and there really wasn’t anything left. We went up with the top lift with Blumi to check out if there was anything left in the gully’s while Ape stayed once again at the pisteurs hut heeling his toe.
There was almost nothing left and the little there existed was totally drifted by the upward winds forming huge wind lips pointing towards the top of the mountain. We tried to film some short runs from the mid section, but it was really hard. I almost bend my hip too and it seemed that the day was done for us.
The only place that might have something was the lower section of the mountain, we thought and went to check it out from the down station. When we were skiing towards the access chair we spotted some guys hiking towards the top of the mountain on the down section we were planning to go and check out.
Fast change of plans and we were on our way to hike up to the same mountain. On the top we found the guys and they were the guys we had met a few days ago, the same ones that invited us to their lodge. The gully that we had in mind skiing down didn’t look that good with a huge cornice hanging on the top of it and the gully being totally icy.
We went to check out all the other gullies on the same face and they all were badly windblown, so we went around the whole face to get to the lower part. On the lower part we found a couple of really mellow runs which we filmed with the local guys.
One thing I need to say or the guys will probably send my mailbox full of spam. The last part we skied down was easy skiing and the snow wasn’t that bad and still I managed to fell, Blumi skied after me and he skied in to a hole. Ape was the only one of us Finns that was able to ski down the small face without falling. Bad thing was that not one of the Scottish guys fell, so the score for the day was Scotland (4) – Finland (-1). All though we lost the game, it was the best skiing and fun we had skiing in Scotland when we were skiing with these guys.
After the run it was time to pack our stuff and say good bye to Glencoe, it amazing people and the amazing weather. We headed back to Fort William to shoot something cool.
A couple of days back we talked with the owner of the B&B about some highland dancing and piping. Well, it happened that the daughter of the owner happened to be a champion of Scotland in highland dancing and the son to be a champion in piping. So we made a deal with the daddy-o that they will perform a short routine for us when they have time. Luckily they had some time for us and when we got back from the Glencoe they were already warming up.
The next morning we woke up early and drove up to the highlands. We weren’t going skiing, but to film some goofing around in kilts. I left mentioned that when we were walking around Edinburgh we found a good looking Kilt-makers shop and went to buy us kilts. Of course you have to have a kilt when you are in Scotland. The idea of wearing a kilt as a good fun kind shed off during the day, because the weather was once again really Scottish. Icy rain with high winds and you’re standing there wearing only a long shirt and a skirt. Well, we got the shots done in a couple of hours and finally got back to the warmth of our car.
Next we had to drive all the way to Edinburgh. We first drove to Stirling and stopped there for some really super good Indian food, literally the best ever. After this we drove straight to Edinburgh. Funny thing when you’re renting a car in Scotland is that you can rent the car with filled tank, but you should return it with empty one. So of course we wanted to do this to save some money and almost ended up standing on the side of the high way. Luckily we managed to get to the gas station in time and put the needed 3.5 liters of gasoline in the tank to make the rest of the trip, haha.
We arrived in Edinburgh at around 10 P.M. and went straight to the same hotel that we used when we came to Scotland. It was the easiest solution for us and the hotel really was good. We wanted to buy the plane tickets home for the next day, but there weren’t any left, so we had to spend one more day in Edinburgh.
Well, the next day I decided to go for a walk once again, where the guys decided to go to a gym. I walked around the city in pouring rain and went to have a coffee in this one big mall. It was really relaxing to just look people walk by and write some post cards. I met the guys later on that day and we went to do something that I had spotted the first day in Scotland.
The next morning we were finally flying back to Finland and all thought we only had 3 hours of sleep before we had to head to the airport and we were really tired, it felt so good to jump in that bus knowing that you’re going home.
Next we’re heading to a place that literally is a mix of ice and land, cleverly called Iceland, see you there.
