Out of office on……

Heading in to soak up the Fringe Festival atmosphere had been on our to-do list all month and we finally got round to it on Friday! We were fortunate enough to be given 2 free tickets to watch a guy called 'Beardyman' by someone who had just signed Glenn up to do a website for him...the show was scheduled for 11.15pm so we decided to head in mid-afternoon to ensure we didn't peak too soon! We did a bit of research into what was on but there's just soooo much to choose from and hard to know what's good/bad etc so we ended up booking tickets for one show - a young acapella singing group that looked good and decided to just head in and go with the flow from there! Town is mad busy at the moment - full of tourists/locals just wandering around taking in the atmosphere and music/dance/theatre groups performing on the street and all the way down the Royal Mile. Although it was quite frustrating walking through the crowds of people trying to get to the show venue on time, I guess that's all part of the Festival! The singing group we went to see were called The Oxford Alternotives and they were brill! A group of 15 students from Oxford Uni singing a range of modern and older songs including covers of Fleetwood Mac's 'Landslide' and Ed Sheeran's 'Sing'. To get an idea check out their website http://www.alternotives.com/ where you can view videos of them performing. After the hour long show we wandered through Grassmarket and over to George Street for a few drinks in Wetherspoon's before having a late tea at Pizza Express 🙂 We then got a taxi over to Pleasance Courtyard (which was a much bigger venue) for Beardyman - by now we'd done a bit of research and seen that this guy does weird/impressive things with his voice and has performed at the BBC Comedy Proms at the Albert Hall and on TED! It was a really good performance and worth staying up for...it's hard to explain what he does so if you're interested I suggest you watch these videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WwAYeaLSCQ             http://www.ted.com/talks/beardyman_the_polyphonic_me We then walked home, getting in around 2am which was a late one for us! As a result, Saturday was a very chilled day that pretty much consisted of a nice lie in, comfort food and films! Feeling a bit more energised on Sunday, we decided to head northwards over the Forth bridge for a day out as we'd found a couple of relatively short walks in Fife we wanted to do. After driving for about an hour we arrived at the start of the first walk which was Benarty Hill near Ballingry (details here: http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fife-stirling/benarty-hill.shtml). This was a nice, hour-long straightforward up-down walk to the top of Benarty Hill. The walk took us through woodland and then over lovely purple heather to get to the summit, which had views over Loch Leven and the surrounding hills. Some of the photos capture the weather during the walk which consisted of a mixture of sun, wind, cloud and rain! Once back in the car it was a 20min drive to Falkland, a lovely little town with a Palace in the centre. We had a little wander round and bought a bap before heading off to walk East Lomond (details of walk here: http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fife-stirling/east-lomond.shtml). The walk up to the summit was steep but the views were worth it....the walk then took us down the other side of the hill and on a loop past the base of West Lomond (that’ll be a walk for another day) and following tracks through a picturesque glen and back to the town. Despite it being a fairly windy walk, it was a nice walk combining the hill, forest, glen and town. We were also lucky with the weather and managed to dodge the heaviest of the showers throughout the day. By the time we got back home it was 7pm and my legs were ready for a rest!