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Just off the A9 - My Life in Grantown on Spey.

THE LAST POST

This is the view from the last Munro Party we went to on Saturday.
It is Ben Hope near Tongue in Sutherland, a quiet and easy 3 hour drive from Grantown and such a beautiful and remote place.
Scotland is full of beautiful and remote places and is to me what makes living here the best thing I have ever done.
It IS hard, caring for someone and I have touched on that part of my life a little bit but the reality is that this part dominates all my life in Grantown. It is hard to leave for my weekends away and I haven't done as much as I would like to do. But if it weren't for my dad, I wouldn't be here, so I have his neediness to thank for the ultimate decision Ralph and I made to settle here.
I can't wait to explore more of the country and I want to explore it on foot, on bike, on water and on horseback...hips, knees, weather and availability of friends both human and equine, to do so.
Meanwhile Yorkshire is still only 7 hours drive away.

Gold for Grantown.

We have our own post box painted gold for a medal won by Craig Maclean, the eyes of the blind cyclist Anthony Kappes, (who also won gold of course) in the 200m sprint. setting a lap record.

I think everyone in the UK has been excited by the Olympics and Paralympics and it's nice to have a local competitor do well. However, I have been shouting for the locals to Yorkshire. Today the hand cycling was won by a Halifax woman...and that still felt like a home win.

This will be my penultimate post before Yorkshiretospeyside closes because now I should be a Highland lassie. One part of me has always been so...but for now I'm rushing off to the Grant Arms Hotel for a talk on Walking in Scotland, just to see how it's done.

Another tourist weekend.

This is a beautiful car. It was one of many that parked up for Motormania last weekend.
The town was packed and everyone was out, strolling up and down in the sunshine, listening to the live music provided by the pipe band and the Scottish dance band (perhaps there is a generic term for this, but fiddlers etc) and the Farmer's Market, stalls for local charities and some market stalls so that people could buy blow-up hammers for some reason.

It was also Dad's birthday. Sadly not one of the good days so he missed his birthday dinner. He is 83 and has good days and a lot of poor days when he feels frail and tired or is sick and unable to eat. On a good day he can walk to the river through the woods but these days are increasingly infrequent.
Grantown is a good place to grow old, the local services are fantastic and Dad gets his prescription delivered to the house if he can't make it. They just bring it, he doesn't ring. They just notice he hasn't appeared by closing time and the staff trot over with it. The "service" is partly because we are a small town and partly because of the good nature of the people who chose to live here.

In 6 days I will have lived here permanently for a year and this blog will cease. The transition is complete; from Yorkshire to Speyside.

The Motormania was on Sunday, on Saturday I climbed a mountain from Glen Feshie and on Friday I canoe-ed round Loch an Eilean. The need to fit in all the good weather activities I can is pressing as winter is on the way. The curtains were drawn at 8.40pm...but we're not there yet!