Roseisle Companion Dog Show.

It was a long way for "just a Companion show" some might say, but the road north through the mountains to Roseisle in Morayshire is one of my favourites and the weather turned out beautiful despite driving for an hour and a half through heavy drizzle before it turned dry as I approached Grantown on Spey. There was, as usual, a good turnout of exhibitors and the food on offer, provided by the club, The Spey Valley DC, was excellent. There were classes for pedigree dogs and others for all, including both pedigree and crossbreed. I had taken 2 dogs and came away with 3 rosettes, none of which was a red!

The first class, the pedigree puppies, gets underway.

The judge with the Pomeranian puppy, the eventual Best Puppy in Show.

A Pointer puppy.

A Great Dane puppy.

An alert Border Collie puppy.

An aristocratic Borzoi.

A workmanlike German Shepherd.

An elegant Viszla

Is Great Dane puppy having his nose wiped?

An exhibitor does a neat turn.

The winner of the Junior Handling, steps forward with his West Highland White Terrier.

One of the entries in the "Odd Couple" novelty class.

The Eurasier, Reserve Best in Show.

The Best in Show, the whippet.

A New Toy.

I acquired a "film/slide" scanner/converter recently and have been struggling to put some of my hundreds of old slides, from the 1960s onwards, on the pc. It is a very time consuming process, well it is in my case. I think my laptop runs very slowly, but I'm no expert. The colours are not quite true but what an experience seeing some of these old photos, most of which I had forgotten even existed. I do have a projector but it's a bit of a hassle getting it all set up with all its paraphernalia and one of the last times I used it, a few years ago, the lamp blew and it cost a fortune for a new one.

The quality of some of these photos leaves a little to be desired but they make up for that in nostalgia.

My first car on my first longish trip after passing my driving test. My cousin and I had gone to Aberdeen, a distance of just over 100 miles and she had to help out driving on the way home as I had developed cramp in my accelerator leg! I have obviously overcome that as the years have gone by! This photo was taken on the infamous Cairn o' Mount road, near Banchory, one of the first roads to block after a snowfall.

This photo of the Forth Road Bridge under construction in early 1963 was taken from the ferry.

This little papillon, Lacey, belonging to one of my daughters was my introduction to the breed. She met with an unfortunate accident but was a real wee character. Her friend is Tam, our collie.

My SkyWatch photo.

The sky above a Midlothian upland farm, Scotland, on a beautiful day a few weeks ago. I think it has rained almost every day since then!
To see the sky contributions of others go to the SkyWatch site.

I remember the Forth ferries.

These old photographs, taken in the early 1960s were sent to me by Bill Brown of Prestonpans. He knew someone who worked on the construction of the new road bridge and who invited him up to the top of the concrete pillars via the narrow walkway high up on the top of the wire suspension hawsers, a great opportunity to take some historic photographs (if you didn't suffer from vertigo!) They certainly evoked a few memories of travel to Edinburgh in my youth.

For more memories and old photos click here.

This old photo was taken from high up on the walkway of the under construction road bridge and shows the ferries which plied between North and South Queensferry with the rail bridge in the background. We didn't travel across to Edinburgh very often when I was a child and when we did it was usually by train as dad wasn't keen to drive in the city. In fact, when a motorway was built through our county of Kinross he avoided it like the plague and had no idea of how to drive on it. Sometimes we went to Edinburgh zoo by car but he drove no farther into the capital. When we went by train, we slept very little the preceding night, such was the excitement of rail travel and we always had to throw out a penny for luck while crossing the bridge. Most of the time it would strike a metal pillar as they were quite difficult to avoid! On arival in Edinburgh it was up the long flight of Waverley Steps, across Princes Street and into "Woolies" for something to eat, then down to the street again to catch a tram out to the zoo. This was all very exciting for us country kids.

Another view from near the top of the south end of the bridge. Both of these hawsers from which the bridge is suspended are composed of thousands of steel wires and in very recent years it has been discovered that some of them have rusted and snapped--a very comforting thought! There is now ongoing work to extract the moisture from the casing in which the wires are held to try to minimise the rusting. Here's hoping it works!

We eagerly watched the progress of the bridge in the early 1960s and couldn't wait to try it out. I still remember us piling into my brother's old car on the day it opened to traffic and heading for Edinburgh. We were there in about 30 minutes compared to about 2 hours waiting for the ferry and even longer if we went by train counting the time taken to drive to Kirkcaldy from the farm and wait for a train. This bridge was welcomed by all.

Another view from well up the walkway, showing the approach roads under construction.

My World--The Forth Bridges.

I was born and brought up and am now retired and living again not far from these bridges. Before the bridges the route to Edinburgh from Fife meant a long trip round by the Kincardine Bridge, much higher up the River Forth or even by Stirling before that bridge was built.

For 800 years travellers had crossed the Forth by way of ferries but with the coming of the train a rail bridge was required and this was completed in 1890. It is a metal cantilever type and requires constant painting thus the ever present scaffolding. I think some new type of long lasting paint is being applied at the moment to cut down on this.This sufficed until the popularity of the car grew so much that a road bridge was called for. The decision to build was made in 1947 but it was only completed in 1964 and is a suspension bridge with an overall length of 2.5 km. Occasionally it is closed due to extreme gales, and this is fairly rare, with much disruption to traffic. It cost £19.5 million to build with almost £15 million coming from the UK government. Tolls were established and this debt was repaid but due to upkeep of the structure they were continued until very recently when they were scrapped all together. Now there is no need to rummage feverishly in your purse for a £1 coin in case you caused a hold-up in the traffic. At busy times there were horrendous queues.

To read about many other parts of the world look here.

The Forth Rail Bridge.

The Forth Road Bridge, not far upstream from the rail bridge.

Scottish Papillon Club Open Show.-the 2nd hectic day!

My task, as a committee member for the club, was to bake some cakes and make a big pot of stovies, a traditional Scottish dish, suitable for the exhibitors.This time, because our club shows are held on the same weekend as the Scottish Kennel Club Champ. show, things became quite hectic as the club show was the 2nd of the 2 days. So organisation of the cooking and baking was at a premium, as sponges cannot be made far in advance of consumption... I have very little room in my upright freezer drawers to store baking. I burned quite a bit of the midnight oil last week.

Sue (Gennasus) came to stay for the 2 nights of the shows and she was drafted in, on Saturday evening, to help with the stovies. She peeled the potatoes while I sliced them and prepared the onions etc. and eventually the cooking got underway at about 9pm.

They must have turned out ok as there was none left for me, nor did I taste my raspberry cream sponge as it too had gone, but I did manage to have some of the other cakes.

This turned out to be, for me, one of my most successful club shows for a few years. Spencer was Best Veteran in Show, Mo came first in Open dog, Swallow went unplaced but then.....Spencer was declared Reserve Best in Show...not bad for an almost 12 year old dog!

This was his second such award at this club show, having been RBIS when he was a much younger dog, a good few years ago.

Spencer's prizes.......a sash, a huge rosette, a trophy and a special judges prize of a beautiful little ceramic clock decorated with delicate butterflies. Thank you to the judge, Mrs. Eileen Roberts (Rayol)! A wonderful end to the busiest weekend (plus a few days beforehand) I've had in ages.

First day of a hectic weekend.

My nephew, his wife and 6 year old daughter, Lauren came to the Scottish Kennel Club Championship Show at Edinburgh on Saturday. They are thinking of buying a family pet and, after dismissing the original idea of a Labradoodle, they came to have a look around the many breeds on show with the idea of finding some information on something not too big for Lauren. She took a liking to my Mo, seen in the above photo, and then they went off to look at some other breeds. The parents fancied a Tibetan Terrier, not too big and not too small. However Lauren just wanted to come back to hug Mo and had no interest in anything else...his number 1 fan!

We had some slight success at this show with Mo coming 4th in the Open dog class and Swallow, slightly better at No. 2 in her class, Limit bitch. The winner, Ancojo Chasing Wishes (Mr and Mrs J. Cooper) was the eventual Best of Breed!

SkyWatch--The Man in the Moon.

Is this the Man in the Moon wearing his seatbelt?--looks like our traffic laws are catching up with him.

This photo of the Road Bridge, which crosses the Firth of Forth in East Central Scotland, was taken from the moving coach as we were returning late from a dog show down in England and the "man in the moon" is the window sticker reminding us to wear seatbelts!

To see more "Sky" photos from all over click here.

Alpacas.

With three friends I was on a trip to the north of England and we met these alpacas. They are really cute animals with the most beautiful eyes and long eyelashes. Originating in South America they are much smaller than the llama and much better natured. They can spit, like the llama but usually only reserve this habit for another alpaca. Their fleece is much prized, containing no lanolin and so is hypoallergenic. They come in a variety of colours.

When I was in Australia at the beginning of the year I saw numerous herds and alpaca farming seems to have taken off in several areas outside their native South America. They survive quite happily on poor , rough grazing.

Recently shorn Toby and his mum.

This one comes in white!

The long neck can be a useful handle.

....and this one comes in brown!

Wild and tasty.

While out walking, these days, I do my fair share of eating, courtesy of Mother Nature. Wild rasps are so much sweeter and tastier than the cultivated type found in the shops and the brambles, now just coming into season, are delicious. My fingers, and probably around my mouth, are usually stained an unbecoming shade of purply-pink by the time I get back home.
We do not, of course, eat the rosehips but we used to gather them when I was at primary school, where we were paid 3d.(old money) per pound. I never made much. I think the most I ever gathered, and it looked a lot to me, was 3 lb., but one family in the local village, Scotlandwell, did , on an almost commercial scale, turning up at the school on Mondays in August/ September with sackfuls. The whole family, and it was a big family, went gathering all weekend and put the rest of us small time kids to shame.
The rosehips were then gathered by someone and sent to a factory, I have no idea where, and Rosehip Syrup was the end product. We were given this as children, every day as it was a good source of vitamin C but nowadays it is sort of frowned upon because of the sugar content. Some people, especially the "health police" are such spoilsports!
Gathering all three of these fruits comes at a price as their stalks are furnished with extremely sharp, annoying barbs. A walking stick to hook round the strands is a useful tool when gathering brambles. However I was merely a casual browser!

A late ripe raspberry.

A plump juicy bramble.

Rosehips.

Dogs on the loose!

Instead of being prepared for and travelling down to Wales for the Welsh Kennel Club Championship show we went for a walk.

Ploughing has already started immediately the crops were harvested. This big reversible plough can probably turn over more ground in an hour than a pair of horses would have in a day and all with the comfort of a spring-loaded seat and a radio.

Seagulls were following the plough and here the dogs try to catch some of the crows feeding on the ploughed ground.

They didn't catch any!