Great Glen Expedition

Just last week, a group of friends and I canoed the Great Glen across Scotland from sea to sea (Inverness to Fort William, 60miles) as part of our Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award. It was an awesome experience and the weather was very good to us. The first photo is of our first campsite on the edge of loch Ness, a lot of sunbathing was had by all, and the final two photo's are of the final lock on the canal with Ben Nevis in the background and then the winning team with the sea in the background.

2007

Wow. I appologise for the extremely long delay in updating this blog. I'm afraid my last entry wasn't exactly true and Facebook became the blog I most updated. I realise that it is not practical for a lot of people to have to register to view my blog so i will continue to update this site as often as i remember...

Well I guess quite a lot has happened since I last updated. My training has been continuing. Tomorrow I am on an orienteering course here at the centre. People from the different centres across scotland will come too. Yesterday and Monday I went canoeing. Yesterday was an amazing day, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the loch was so still there was a perfect reflection of the surrounding mountains! God is so good. half the loch was frozen over so we spent a lot of the day breaking through the ice!

This evening I began "Chef School". We ran it last year and decided to do it again as it went down well. I organise a few evenings to train people in the basics of cooking. This evening we baked lots of cakes. Toffee brownies, cappuccino loaf, viennese whirls and chocolate cookies. They all went down well (quite literally!). Next week I hope to instruct in the making of simple meals so once the GAP year staff leave here they will be able to fend for themselves!!

I recently got invited to be part of a worship band for an upcoming evangelistic event. A lady who bacame a christian through the Sunday evening services we began here wants to organise an event for the community. She is calling it witness and hopes to have a worship concert sorta thing with an evangelistic speaker and refreshments. She ran one last year with a full-time worship band but it was mainly for local christians. She managed to pack the church out then, let's pray God will bring them in again.

It snowed overnight here. Our first real snow of the year. We only got an inch but it's a start. Hoping to do some ice-climbing at the weekend.

Here are some random pictures of some of the silly things I get up to here to keep you amused. Until next time, God bless.

(The first is of a very scary clowns face that Paddy created on my face whilst bored one evening. Very painful as he got it in my eyes and they watered all night! The second of me as my alter ego spiderman, leaping from the fireplace! The last of me at the christmas meal which was postponed to January due to flooding in December leaving us trapped at the centre!)

New Blog

I have a new Blog site, but 'Ardeonaig Adventures' will still be my main site that i will update most regularly. If you are on facebook though, feel free to add yourself to the new site:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=505191189

Some recent Photo's of a winter adventure:

Murder Mystery Evening

A few evenings ago, we played a murder mystery Game here at Ardeonaig. We had an amazingly good Steak dinner (made by expert chefs Pete and Paddy!) and the game began. It was titled 'Murder on the Piste' and so we all had characters to create costumes for. My name was Claus Von Langlauf and I was a ski instructor playboy! I managed to procure a Lycra cross country ski all-in-one suit from the centre director. The evening was great fun, it turned out that Jacques Frost and Sophina Salopette were the co-murderers. Afterwards I had much fun climbing around the house as the ski suit quite closely resembles spiderman's own outfit.

Life Recently

Recent exciting activities in the life of Tim:

Learning to roll a kayak
Doing a black run on a mountain bike
Doing Feacle ridge (a grade 2 climb) in winter conditions
Enjoying Birthday celebrations
Passing an intensive 4 day BASP first aid course (British Association of Ski Patrollers)

I know it's brief but thats all i got time for now folks.

Will update soon with more photos

I'm still alive!

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of updated info recently. We've had trouble here with the internet for the past few months. The company went bust and the new one is a little tempramental so please bear with me if you hear nothing for a long while.

Recently went on my Duke of Edinburgh Silver expedition. It was very wet and mingin' but worth it for the skills we learnt and the odd moments of clear sky and awesome scenery. So have just been recovering from that recently and also from the shock of a very expensive MOT!

Training is going well, shall hopefully have passed my Minibus test by the time I come home for Christmas which is very exciting because it means I will be able to instruct more off-site activities such as hill days, canoeing and kayaking and gorge walking.

I'm still hoping to come home for my Birthday but will need to keep a close eye on financial situation as to whether that will still be possible so please don't think nasty thoughts about me if you don't see me until christmas, it will just be that i am broke!

Please let me know how you're all doing. Haven't heard from a lot of ppl for a long time! it's a two way thing ya know! ;)

Come visit me....!

For those of you yet to visit me, here are some photo's to entice you!

Musical Summer

Over the summer we had two American staff named Molly and Karlyn and a Canadian, Liz, who were excellent musicians. During their stay we created a band called...

'Celtic Confusion'

playing cletic, folk and bluegrass music. We had many jamming sessions and finally got our first gig at The Ben Lawers Hotel on the other side of the loch at their open mic night. It was beyond all expectations and we got paid in Potato wedges!! Their were many other folk musicians there playing accordian, double bass, Mandolin, banjo, harmonica, fiddle, celtic drum... we had a great evening.


A few weeks later we played at an Ceilidh hosted by Jim McNeish who attends the Killin church, he's quite well connected and Martin Smith from Delirious was on holiday with his family at Jim's so heard us play!

Finally we went to a small music festival in a town near by that was dedicated to folk/bluegrass music and went to the evening concert with bands from america. It rocked!

2 Weeks to go!!

It's now only 2 weeks (thats 14 days!) till i Join the Apprentice instructor course!!! My first day instructing i have just found out will be an adventure day out on Drummond Hill! I cannot wait. Have my last staff meal this tuesday so am preparing something yummy for them all whilst no guests are in. (not that we don't prepare yummy food when the guests ARE in you understand!)

2 evenings ago had my first taste of instructing on the High Ropes course. Have had the training but as a lot of Summer staff and Gap year staff were leaving Shelagh and I led a session for those who hadn't been on it before. If i hadn't already got the instructing bug, i got it then!