Gary Writes A Blog

It was Armadale Galaday today. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Galaday for about 3 years. Stayed dry for most of the day and it was a good procession with pipe bands and the local school kids dressed up…

Yesterday me and my dad went out fishing for Seatrout on Scotlands biggest fresh water loch, Loch Lomond. It’s a bit early for Seatrout on the loch, probably would be better in another 3 weeks, but we thought we would take the chance while we could.

We started around 12:00 so thought it would be best to have a bit of lunch first. The ducks at Balmaha got jealous so we gave them a biscuit or two.

It was a bright day to start with, but the wind was a lot stronger once we got out to the islands.

Two signets were making sure they weren’t going to end up a pikes lunch…

After a few drifts and having touched nothing, we decided to go for a famous Loch Lomond “Fry-up”. We built a small fire on an island called Inchlonaig and lay back to enjoy flame grilled (or fried) burgers, onions and mushrooms while looking over to Ben Lomond.

After the fry up we were full of renewed confidence, but it wasn’t to be. I rose one small seatrout that didn’t really break the surface of the water, and got this small Brown trout fishing at the shoreline of Luss. Still a great day out and chips and Irn-Bru on the way home!

Since I arrived back, the attention of the nation has been on Armadale with live feeds from all major news networks. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been for my benefit, it’s been because my home town was used as a trial for ways to combat the bother of youth drinking (though I doubt anyone from the ‘Dale has ever caused any problems while inebriated).

The Scottish Government has suggested banning the sale of alcohol to under 21’s from Off-licenses and stopping the sale of buy 1 get 10 free offers and all the action has focused on Armadale. What a slur against the fine upstanding people of this town

On Sunday I made a visit back to Scotland and gave my Dad a good surprise with the help of Neil for Fathers day.

Today was my Dad’s birthday so he and I decided to climb up Ben Ledi which is a hill about 1 hour away from where we live. Its about 2800ft above sea level, so it’s not counted as a mountain, but it was still a bit of a climb. Good views all around the across as far as Arran on the west coast and the Pentland hills on the east coast.

Last Friday was the Swedish National day and we went downtown to see the festivities. Again it was a roasting hot day and we watched from the bridge to see them release 50 000 blue and yellow balloons in-front of the palace. Youtube video below…

We were out last week at our favourite restaurant Hermans in Sodermalm. One of the best things about this restaurant is the view and because the weather was so nice we decided to sit out on the veranda and were lucky enough to be able to watch the balloons flying over the harbour from Djurgarden.

We left the restaurant just as the sun was going down behind the old city…

Quite a famous story in Sweden is of the ship Gotheborg  which is built according to the main dimensions to the hull and rig of a Swedish East India Company ship that sank in Gothenburg harbour in September, 1745. For the last couple of years, it has sailed around the world to China (in fact it arrived in China the same time I was there).

We got a bit of a surprise, when we turned around to see it sailing up the Stockholm harbour (especially when it started to fire it’s canons) and then docking at Skeppsbron. Very Cool.

It’s early days with the European Championships league table, but Real Ale Madrid are making good progress…

At the moment, we are sitting 9th out of 218.

Another name I recognise from the league table is my friend Niklas. Unfortunately he seems to be off to a slow start (200th)

Yesterday was roasty-toasty warm here in Stockholm. I was quite glad that I wasn’t running the Stockholm marathon, but in a way I was disappointed to miss out…

We were there supporting a friends sister who was competing and afterwards we went for a couple of beers and something to eat back at there house. When me and Maria were walking home about midnight, we saw loads of very large fish jumping around in the shallows of the sea/lake. It was too dark to really see what they were and I thought there might be slim chance that they were sea-trout, so when we got home I packed up my rod and went back down to the lake.

I got there about 1am and could tell straight away that it was only big shoals of bream. They must have been in near the side to spawn, so although there was loads of them, they were almost impossible to catch. Almost…

This is how it looked at 3am this morning just as I was leaving.

We walked past another part of the lake today and in the bright sun, you could see that there was hundreds of these fish in the shallows. I took a wee video on my camera…

A friend of a friend is running a little online competition which allows you to predict the score of the upcoming Euro Championships games and produces a league table so you can see who is the best.

I went solely on 2 minute intuition rather than a technical analysis of the teams relative strengths. My time is called “Real Ale Madrid” which was stolen off a Glasgow five aside team.

If you wish to compete, it’s free and although it’s in Swedish it’s pretty obvious what to do. Just visit  www.dimtrix.se and click on “TIPPA” on the left hand side. Fill in your team name and your email.

Then you come through to the place where you fill in what you think the score will be.

Just fill them in and click  the “Uppdatera Grupper” box at the top of the page to update the groups and when you’re done click on “Nasta Sida” for the next page.

You then decide who goes through in the knock out stages by using the drop down boxes. Once your finished click “Nasta Sida” again.

Now you have three choices. The first two are about who you think will score most goals (team then player) and the second choice is which team will get the least yellow and red cards.

Click on “Klar!”  and you are done. You can then see the league by clicking on “Topplista”. You can’t change your mind on the results, so do it right first time! Good luck!

One day some aliens are going to do this to us.