baltic!

There are three inches of snow on the ground and people are talking about the coldest winter in decades and cancelling bookings because of the treacherous traffic conditions.
I disagree with most people in Ardfern though, thinking that snow is absolutely lovely and how do you mean you can't drive when it's snowing..? :P
I once heard a story from an Estonian truck driver about a heavy snowfall in France; all the cars were piling up in every available car park to the point where other drivers, tired from their own international trips and deeply discouraged by the snow, couldn't fit in.. so the police pitched up and quite quickly selected out all the Scandinavian and Baltic drivers and told them to hit the road; claiming that they're used to tough conditions!



Scottish people have a funny expression to describe cold weather - they would come in from the front door of the pub on a "cold" winter night, delivering a series of shivers, rubbing hands against each other, jamming up the fireplace and saying "uuhh, it's baltic!"
Now Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) do experience occasional freezing weeks during their winters (a few days of minus thirties celsius every winter), but compared to Scottish weather, so are the other seasons more extreme; more hot in the summer, more cold in the winter; oh perhaps not more rainy in the autumn, but anyway using the word "siberian" or "laplandic" would make much more sense... :P

One of our frequent pub-visitors, Robin (who has something to say about everything) suggested that the word "baltic" is not so much to describe the weather conditions in Baltic states as to say something about their personalities.. John, a superbly intelligent local who has an amazing ability to remain insightful and interesting even after fifteen pints of Guinness, thought that since Scottish people love their drink so much, it would be difficult for them to pronounce "Siberian" or "Laplandic" or even "Arctic" throughout most of the day, so they settle with using a slightly less accurate alternative..



Anyway our few weeks of baltic-like weather have just been lovely, looking forward to a white Christmas..

crazyamazingnaked

During my stay in Ardfern, I've developed quite a liking for swimming in Scottish lochs. Or swimming in lochs, seas, rivers, anything, really...
It all started with our little local loch Ardlarach which we occasionally visited with my crazy co-worker Sarah (who had never swum outdoors before). It had a road trimmed with blackberries leading to it, a life ring, an overhanging tree to jump off from, additional surprises in a form of floating dead sheep etc., perfect! By the end of August though, as the temperatures started to drop and the road to the loch seemed to grow longer and longer each day, no-one really felt like coming with me anymore except occasional guys from the pub who thought going swimming with me would be an excellent next step towards picking me up.. :P haha.

Anyway, as it happened, on the third or fourth day of September I talked about my love for swimming with my (ex boy-)friend Martin, mentioning that I had swum in that loch every day of that month so far. So we made a bet and I started taking pictures of my daily trips down to the loch.
Pretty soon, as the weather and the water went colder and colder, even the most adventurous people I met thought the price of dipping themselves into cold water to be too much to pay for the company of a crazy pretty eastern-european girl.. :P In other words, I was to walk down to the loch and back all alone every single day... I found a way to combine my trips with eating loads of blackberries and listening to motivational audio books..









Quite quickly I became known in Ardfern as „the crazy girl who goes swimming in that freezing loch every day“, to be honest I might have helped the rumour a bit by telling everyone about it myself :P
And I was quite proud of myself - I took trips down to the loch early in the morning as well as late in the evening just after my shift, borrowed a bike from a friend once when I only had 30 minutes left before work; jumped off a sailing boat in heavy rain, ended up getting home completely wet on another rainy day, took a kitchen probe down once to find the water temperature to be around 12 degrees celsius (experiments under running cold tap water showed that it is warmer to take a cold bath in the Galley)...

great fun!

Loch Ardlarach, September


Morar, October


Loch Ness, December