Creuch hill walk

Took Dougs (my dog) up to creuch hill today. Creuch hill is the highest hill in Greenock as far as I'm aware. We walked up to loch thom via whinhill then up the old largs road. The picture shows loch thom. This loch provides inverclyde with its drinking water. The water level is very low just now. The lowest I have seen it in ten years or so.

Back on terra firma

It was all over too fast. I have no idea what the helicopter engineer is doing in the background. We left the heli-pad and took a tour of the air museum including the tour of one of the retired concordes. It niffed of oxters and Bee Ohh inside. Disappointing...I think I would be a bit hacked off if I shelled out six grand plus for a one way ticket to find that the air crew were scrimping a bit on the scooshes of air freshener. After that we baled (haw haw .. air theme u see :-) ..) into the city centre for a pub crawl with cocktails. We ended up in a place called 'fishers in the city'. I would absolutely recommend it. Lovely food and the staff were super friendly and hyper efficient. We had the works including champagne and oysters..A great night to round off a great day.

Portobello beach

We also got a peek of portobello beach from the air. Next day we drove through it and found it to be foosty, drab and lacking. Don't go there. It looks better from the sky, which is, to be fair, a long way off. It's for the best.

Arthur's seat from the heli

Arthur's seat from the air.

In the helicopter

Neither of us needed to reach for the sick bags. Once you were up to speed it was surprisingly smooth. I expected it to be a bit more bumpy than it was. We did a scout round the city at around 12,000 ft. The weather was perfect despite the dodgy forecast.

WE ARE GONNA CRASH!!

The pilot introduced himself as 'Henry'. When things went quiet for a couple of mins I got a bit more concerned for Henry's well being. I realised that with the pilot sitting away from you pretty much motionless and mute, their eyes could be fixed and dilated yet you would have no clue that your pilot had expired and become a stiff some time ago. Cue the scenes from airplane :-)

Helicopter trip

As a break from the outdoor blog I thought I would do a wee trip journal to provide a tangential slant to my site. Hope you don't mind :-) Diane booked a helicopter trip over Edinburgh for my birthday way back in June so we decided to head out to auld reekie and make a proper weekend of it. We had a total blast. It was nail biting stuff though on the day of the heli trip because we very nearly missed it. An accident on the A1 and a missed turn off almost cost us the flight but people upstairs were smiling on us in more ways than one and we just made it with seconds to spare!!