{"id":61,"date":"2012-05-24T17:28:15","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T17:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/?p=61"},"modified":"2012-05-25T07:01:53","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T07:01:53","slug":"well-we-made-it-so-far-just","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Well we made it so far. Just."},"content":{"rendered":"I had originally planned to spend Tuesday evening in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society with my mate from Aberdeen as a warm up to the Festival. \u00a0 However other things transpired and he couldn’t make it so I went out drinking with\u00a0Yang Guang, one of the Chinese Panda’s that Edinburgh Zoo have recently acquired. \u00a0 \u00a0 I must admit, we did have a great night out and when I left Yang Guang, he was heading for a kebab. \u00a0 \u00a0 I popped in to see him the next afternoon to see how he was; it seems he’s like a bear with a sore head. \u00a0What a lightweight.\r\n\r\n\"\"<\/a>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n\r\nAnyway, Wednesday was a nightmare as far as logitics go. \u00a0 With Al arriving late due to problems with the flight schedules, we then headed out on the 180Mile dash to our B&B over in Tarbert. Since we had originally planned to be there late (about 9pm) we then had to call Donald at the B&B and let him know we’re likely to be closer to 11pm. \u00a0 Which didn’t seem to be a problem for him, however what we forgot to take into account was that the Motorway was going to be closed somewhere in Glasgow and we managed to divert off the motorway just in time and let Sally SatNav take us on a tour of Kelvinside to get an alternative route whilst still going west.\r\n\r\nAfter about 10 miles, we’re back on the road and still only about 5 minutes behind schedule. \u00a0 Something I’m sure we can make up over the distance.\r\n\r\nJust as we think we’re making progress, oh oh. \u00a0It’s a diversion as one of the main dual carriageways is closed. \u00a0 \u00a0Thankfully it’s only a short mile or so diversion. \u00a0 \u00a0 However as we come of the edge of Loch Lomond National Park, there’s a sign saying something about the A83 (Stonefield castle) being subject to 2 Hour escorts. \u00a0 \u00a0Since we had no clue to where this castle was that sign was as much use as a chocolate watch. \u00a0 \u00a0 So we continue up the road and into the darkness. \u00a0 \u00a0 We manage to get 176 of the 180 miles still within the time and we find that the last 4 miles are subject to an escort because it looks like they’re painting the road lines in the evening !!!! \u00a0We both sighed. \u00a0 \u00a0It was 11pm, so we call Donald at the B&B and we advise him of our predicament; with our expectation that we should be through within an hour.\r\n\r\nThe hour was coming up; and woohoo – a truck with flashing lights comes and takes us through the roadworks.\r\n\r\nWe arrive at the B&B bang on midnight, where Donald has the lights on; he shows us to our room and we both head for bed. \u00a0 \u00a0Let’s hope any other logistics run normal as we’ve got some folks arriving by plane on Friday.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had originally planned to spend Tuesday evening in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society with my mate from Aberdeen as a warm up to the Festival. \u00a0 However other things transpired and he couldn’t make it so I went out drinking with\u00a0Yang Guang, one of the Chinese Panda’s that Edinburgh Zoo have recently acquired. \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islay","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Bear-with-a-hangover.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigmcateer.co.uk\/islay\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}