August started on a Saturday, which means that no other month this year starts on a Saturday (unless this was a leap year, which it ain’t – February in a leap year starts on the same day of a week as August). So the Saturday saw us up bright and early for Gutbusting as usual, involving being shouted at for not exercising fast enough, then it was off to Glasgow Science Centre to gaze at their closed Tower (what an indictment of Science and Engineering prowess that they can’t open it) and wait in the cafe for the Imax showing as being a museum outside London it costs over 8 quid per person to go around it.
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in 3D – that was the attraction – the reason to drive for a couple of hours to the Science Centre to see it. What we got was a huge IMAX screen and ten minutes (yes count them), ten minutes of 3D – half of which was an advert for a 3D Christmas Carol and the movie titles – the huge screen seemed to lessen the resolution too so overall not great. The destruction of the London Millennium bridge in 3D was decent – but I felt the rest of the 3D made the characters look like flat stick figures, which was interesting in itself. The Animated advert was the most impressive 3D experience – 3D and animation is such a great combination.
Dining out after the cinema meant losing our way in Glasgow and ending up on the M8 motorway back to Edinburgh, the thought of negotiating the tram works was not on – so we ended up in South Queensferry for an Indian, where Stuart and I robbed of our science experience in Glasgow were experimenting with the oil filled lights and proved that you couldn’t set the restaurant on fire with them – everyone else was edging closer to the fire exit.
Down the Tweed was the call on Sunday – everyone assembled in the Kelso Town Square as requested – a veritable visual feast of wet suits and brightly coloured boats – it turned out that Bob was actually somewhere else with our canoes. After half an hour we sent a scout out who reported on Bob’s position and we assembled at the bank of the Tweed and prepared for launch. Stuart and Steph in one open canoe and me in the other, kneeling and armed with kayak paddle and single canoe paddle and two lengths of scaffolding for punting. The river was higher than normal and the fish were jumping. We set off waving at the folk on the new Kelso bridge and hoping they weren’t going to gob at us (my tilly hat was worn as gob protector).
A sequence of weirs, one is the triple weir at Banf Mill where a breaking wave broke over my bow and soaked me. Stu and Steph double team powered through the weirs and kept going – I caught up with them only to find the wind was pushing us further downstream and lost all the others. We pulled in and decided to lunch only to find a panting Lizzie paddling down on her own looking for us. She paddled a bit further upstream so she could get out and stretch her legs and on trying to join her found myself even further downstream than Stu-Steph. So it wasn’t entirely a social lunch stop with me grabbing hold of reeds at one point of the river, Stu-Steph wedged into the bank, Lizzie striding around munching her sandwich and all the rest up at the weir wondering where on earth we had all disappeared to.
Finally we all reassembled and pushed by wind one chap decided to erect a sail made out of his jumper and a paddle and was making decent headway down the river powered by wind. I was completely at the stern with the bow out of the water using that as a sail, which was a decent idea until the wind changed as we turned a corner and I found myself blown onto rocks, turned around and heading backward down the weir and then into a set of trees (many branches of which were in my canoe when I beached). We saw a whooping swan along with some Bewick swans, lots of ducks particularly wearing a surprised expression as I hit the lee banks, one tiger moth flew over us and a couple of walkers waved at us from the shore. The weather was fine and the Kelso to Coldstream stretch took its toll on me – I went to bed early and snored all the way through till morning.
Comparison websites – whilst in the process of battling through the interfaces of moneysupermarket, comparethemarket et al we came across a few blogs which enlightened us to the fact that it is the insurance companies themselves who own the comparison sites and so their comparisons are between differing brands of the same insurance group (i.e. comparethemarket == Budget). As cunning as a meerkat.
