Aberdeen & The Illuminator Run

After the Troll hunt at Braemar we had a week parked at Nik & Annie's house visiting local parks and searching for some more local Geocaches. If you would like to know more about this fun pastime visit www.geocaching.com where you will find more information.

On Thursday 26th October Kerry & Cheryl with Daisy & Isobel arrived by plane from Eastbourne for us all to spend a few days as a family. After settling in we all went to Aberdeen beach for a walk and all the kids to let off steam. Here they all are all standing on their sand castle to see who falls off first while the water washes it away. Then it was home for a bit of edible slime fun.

In the evening Nik, Kerry & Steve went for a tour of the nearby Brewdog Brewery in Ellen, North of Aberdeen which now has a very special multi purpose Still, from which they now make Gin. After the tour, the lads of course had to sample many of the products and bring home some of the new line of pre-mixed Gin-n-Tonic in a can to the girls to finish off the evening. Thank you Annie for driving us both ways.

Friday evening, all the children dressed up for the village Halloween party. Finlay as Harry Potter, Isobel as a skeleton with a pink Tutu, Daisy as a cat and Lewis as Malfoy from Harry Potter. They all looked fantastic and had a great time at the party.

On Saturday morning we re-located the campers to Aboyne in preparation for the Illuminator Half marathon, a night time 15 mile run or walk through the Glen Tanar forest in the Cairngorms National Park. Nik & Kerry were running. There was quite a bit of competition between them. Especially as Nik had recently run an “Iron Man” which included a run up and down Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain. Annie was walking it with friends, while we looked after all the children. The lads did very well coming in quite close together, Kerry at 2h25and Nik just behind at 2h28. Looks like an annual event.

We all drove back to Nik's the next day which ended up at a slap up restaurant meal to celebrate both Nik & Judy’s birthdays. Monday evening sadly Kerry & family had to catch their flight back to Gatwick and on Tuesday we headed off South again.
We stopped of at Motorhome friends in Birmingham for a few days which included one very long day at the NEC for an art exhibition where Judy attended a number of very interesting workshops on different art techniques.

Heading south again we visited Steve’s brother Bob & his wife Jill who live at Marlborough then on to Steve’s cousin Keith and his wife Linda in Storington west Sussex then on to his other cousin Marlyn and her husband Dick in Pagham near Bognor. Finally we arrived back at Kerry & Cheryl’s house for a few days so as to pack for our next adventure, a cruise round Norway to  the very North, near the Russian border where, hopefully we will get to see the Northern Lights. Something we need to tick off on our “Bucket List” but that will be the subject of our next blog.

So till next time….

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