Everything in it's right place

One cold but sunny morning around April this year, at about 8am, we were on a bus on our way to visit some good friends in Bristol, when tickets sales for a Radiohead tour opened. Now I was aware of this before we boarded the bus, and therefore knew that we wouldn’t be able to book tickets over the internet (funnily enough, Megabus does not have wifi capabilities. Pathetic, I know). Seeing as they are one of my favourite groups EVER, I made alternative arrangements to try get hold of tickets. Basically I roped Alison’s best friends into ‘Operation locate Radiohead Tickets’, by asking her to book some over the net. At the same time Alison and I were planning to phone the ticket office to book telephonically. At around 7:50 we started phoning, but after absolutely no success by 8:10, we realised we might struggle to get through. Kim (Alison’s best friend) phoned us at around 8:15, to tell us that the entire country is sold out, except for 1 show in Edinburgh on 22 August. Now bear in mind that we live in London and the 22 Aug fell on a Tuesday, so I was thinking we might struggle to get to the show and back again in time for work the next day. I thought about it for a while (about 30 seconds) and decided to buy the tickets anyway. We’d make a plan. We have good friends in Glasgow we can stay with and we wanted to go back to Scotland again some time anyway, so why not. Good thing I did because Kim went ahead and made the purchase, only to phone us back 5 min later saying the Edinburgh gig was now also sold out.

And that’s how our Scotland trip was born.

A couple of weeks later we were visiting other good friends in North Wales (details of which are actually included on this travelblog. It was also a VERY cool trip. Check it out!), when we went for a hike up Snowdownia. For those of you that don’t know, Snowdownia is the highest mountain in England & Wales. While walking up I was chatting to our guide Jon, (my very good friend and partner of Pam) and asked him where the highest point in the UK is. He started telling me about Ben Nevis in Fort William on the west coast of Scotland. An idea started forming in my head, and I decided that, seeing as we’re in Scotland in August anyway, we might as well give Ben Nevis a go.

The Scotland trip was growing.

Even more weeks later on a lovely summer’s evening we found ourselves in London, having drinks at our good friend Hannah’s birthday do in Soho, when I mentioned to somebody that we would be in Edinburgh in August. They informed us that the Edinburgh festival would be on.

It was settled then. Our Scotland trip was taking shape.