The weekend just passed

Friday - Burns night and I arranged to meet Ping in town so walked from Tollcross along to Argyl Place to purchase turnip and potatoes before walking into town to meet Mrs Veitch. Then of course I was reminded that Ping was going to a party that evening so I ended up just going home and pottering around till Ping returned at approximately 2am without any Burns celebration.
Saturday - my mums birthday so we all as a family met at lunchtime at Cafe Marlayne, Old Fishmarket Close, Edinburgh and had a really lovely meal with some very quaffable white house wine to accompany. I had the crab starter - excellent, followed by the lamb and the chocolate torte - I almost always choose the chocolate thing however in this case having tried a little of the other sweets I should have had the sticky toffee pudding - delectable.
After lunch Ping and I went round town for a while - 90% off at Harvey Nichols - still out of our league! and then just as we were about to get the bus home Richard called so I arranged to meet him initially at The Standing odour but then changed to All Bar One where we had a few beers and we followed this a few more at Le Monde - a very pleasant evening after a lovely meal.
Sunday - nothing amazing or suprising (slightly fragile head) - I bussed over to Currie, saw Susan and Allan before going for a walk in the Pentlands from there to Hillend - very windy but nice. Then I went to Richards who then gave me lift to the bottom of Morninside before getting the bus home. Vegetarian haggis at last with potatoes and neeps - a good weekend basically.

Wedding of Robert Veitch and Ping Wang

Wedding photos

As you may know Ping and I got married on the 21st december 2007 and what an excellent day it was. To see the pictures collected so far click the picture above and here is the story from my perspective.
I and my best man - Richard went over to my parents whilst Ping stayed at home with her sister and parents to prepare. As you can see I hired a great kilt set from The Kilt Hire Company and I was wearing a Scotland the Brave tartan - I think you will agree I look better than just good!. I had hired the same for Richard but just without the sash which is reserved for the groom. I had prearranged transport however by 2.45 there was no sign of it, and after a lot of frantic phone calls a taxi arrived and got us all to the Registrars office at the corner of The Royal Mile and George IV Bridge - a very lovely venue. Ping arrived a few minutes later looking fantastic and we met our guests for some photos and chat before being taken upto the wedding room. Richard and I were briefed on the ceremony and then it all started.
Ping was brought into the room by her dad - who looked very impressive in his traditional Chinese outfit. Then the ceremony at which I was very emotional - especially at the part where i say "with this ring I thee wed" (It was slightly embarrasing as I was virtually in tears as well as getting a runny nose right at thye same time!) so with a small - get me a hanky break this was completed successfully. I suspect that both Ping and I managed to mangle slightly the normal English of the vows to some extent due to the emotion of the moment.
Vows, rings exchanged and ceremony complete - in what seemed like 10 minutes - signing the marriage certificate plus posed photos doing the same, photos outside and down the stairs - then outside to sparklers which Richard arranged prior to a quick journey for my wife and I to The Cafe Royal via the hotel where we dropped off our stuff.
I had been a little worried about the reception meal at The Cafe Royal but I shouldnt have been - it was fantastic - the staff, the ambience (especially as the bar next door was packed with revellers on the last Friday evening prior to Christmas) and the food was I and it seems everyone thought was excellent. I am using that word a lot in this post but really it was that good. We started off with pink "champagne" and then everyone had a small range of choices from the menu we had chosen as shown here. The reception really started about 5pm and between courses Ping and I tried to do as much mingling as possible and it was great. Later on in the evening we had the speeches and the cake cutting ceremony before heading for the hotel for our honeymoon night. Richards speech was very good and most of it is also available via the above link.
Other comments - as the evening progressed it was noticeable that the people who were accidently using the revolving doors trying to get to the bar were getting more and more inebriated and most were very funny in their reactions to seeing the error of gatecrashing our wedding!.
Summary - the wedding ceremony and the new registrars was lovely, having my friends and family at the wedding and the reception was more better than I hoped and the food at The Cafe Royal along with the service far exceeded my wildest expectations.
Thankyou to everyone who helped to make the wedding of Ping and I such a success.

X-Scotia - and Robert Veitch

Well, recently a lot of things have been happening for me :- Wedding, Christmas, New year all of which I hope to add some more detail soon. Here I am going to tell a little more about my decision to try and enter X-Scotia - a paragliding / walking event to be held in Scotland in April or May of 2008.
When I first heard about this I initially thought no - Bob that is just stupid and plain daft - look at you - 43, fat, unfit and so forth. But over the next week or so I continued to think long and hard about it, to the degree that I actually had sleepless nights - before deciding to register my interest. I did this before New Year so that my decision didnt become some New Year resolution that would then be cast aside at the first hint of difficulty.
Having made this decision I looked at myself with fairly unforgiving eyes and realised that my basic level of fitness was !"£$% (poor) I dont have and wont have a nice lot of lightweight kit, I couldnt walk for hours - with or without my paraglider, my flying is also not very current and I need to do something about it. To this end I commenced walking almost everyday - without loads - just to get the muscles used to that - just shows how bad things were - and having investigated "marathon training regimes" on the net (which i am not qualified to start on !) I am basically trying to gradually increase by about 10% per week my distance, speed etc.
Pre start of "training" I weighed about 107kg in the birthday suit - plus wing etc comes to a lot!.
Today its only the 14th Jan and already - although most people wouldnt be able to tell I have lost a little bit of weight and am a little more toned - although the last weekend did impress on me just how big a task I have taken on:-
Saturday- a flyable day - my first since the last of The Scottish Nationals rounds in the Ochils last October - after some of my usual dithering loaded up car and drove to Tinto. New walking boots to replace my old ones partially held together with tape and also a novelty for me - walking poles - purchased during the sales when I was down in Ambleside. Anyhow wlaked - quicker than usual up - following the forest on the left straight up Lochylock Hill as the low cloud arrived. Met Sean F - who did a first time pack using one of these new concertina bag things here - apparently works quite well - at least I was quite impressed.

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Thinking that it was still relatively early - the walk up had not completely killed me off as normal and hoping that the lovely blue skies might return allowing flight - I decided to go for a walk.- Och I shall just walk along to big Tinto, down and back to the car, so off i went - arriving at the snow covered top - after glimpsing blue skies above - beautiful for a few seconds alittle later. Ah yes my kit - Mac Eden 29 from 1998 - weight a few Kg, Harness - again a few Kg - Woody Valley peak, Reserve a white big thing - yes you guessed a few Kg, Full face helmet, flying suit, Renschler Sol17? vario,Garmin GPS76S thingy, 1 camelbag - nearly frozen, no food! compass, Alinco DJ190e radio, mobile phone, camera - with no spare memory, gloves, lightweight waterproof, flying suit and glider bag roughly "oh my that weighs at least as much as a heavy child" quoting someone else at the top of Tinto. I then basically followed the Northerly path dow past Totherin Hill and then turned right ending up eventually - after a few slips - pretty close to Fallburn - about NS970375 and Thankerton - in the dark. Not such a bright idea wearing black and carrying black bag on a dark night to commence the walk back to the car. No buses apparent - sticking out thumb didnt work, those roads back are populated from my research by quite a few people carriers going remarkably briskly :-). Continued walking for the next few hours until I got back to Wiston where I finally left my glider just at the village hall and walked the last 2.7 miles back to the car - totally knackered - 8pm ish at the car, to then drive home after picking up wing and getting home about 2145 - hungry but more desperate for a hot bath - I was so achey - everything, felt like it ached but shoulders and calves worst plus a nice blister on big toe. Amazingly for me I didnt eat anything all day and even though very tired on the drive back etc I slept poorly. The end - afraid not - the plan was to go for a walk with Richard and Roy on Sunday - so called in the morning I called Richard and said nah - cannot - I am a wreck - ok. A little later text back saying dont worry you could do this walk in a wheelchair so I changed my mind. Picked up at around 9.30am and upto Tyndrum - had a lovely bacon sarny at Real food place and then walked from lower Tyndrum railway stn to waterfall

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and back - just a few miles but I was still jiggered and as such wasnt very quick and what is more crossing a small stream I fell through the smow and ended up with a very wet foot and leg - just the one though. Definitely ache - pushed myself stupidly hard yesterday - starting to realise the magnitude of the X-scotia task and as I sit her quite worried and basically crippled! - ankles worst now. I think a slower progression of walking with weights required. Measuring the Saturday walk it was about 21-23km and as such is the furthest I have ever walked with a paraglider by a very long way - and my body is telling me so. Hopefully future training won`t be so long winded! or painful. I will be interested to find out and I shall try to keep you posted here over the coming months.