walkwithdinosaurs: August 2011

This was the walk after the night before. We started late for the July walk as I, and everyone else on the walk, had been celebrating my retirement. And very good the celebration was - apart from the torrential rain, whch resulted in the collapse of a gazebo and a delay in getting underway on the walk. Given the nature of the night before, we had taken the precaution of arranging a relatively short walk close to the centre of Inverness. Essentailly this filled in a bit of the canal between two stretches where we had previously walked.

As it was designed to wake everybody up, we had also decided that there should be a bit of mental activity as well as a walk. Suffice to say we didn't have the energy for the mental stuff, so I have altered the competition and it appears later in this blog - with a star prize for the winner!

In any event, we eventually got going and this is us strolling along the canal bank towards the place where we started the June walk. As you can see, it was a nice day - despite the biblical proportions of rain the day before. I console myself in the knowledge that the antediluvian days were the days of work and that no longer worries me.

Indeed it soon got warm enough for Mac to take off his jacket. Happily he stopped at that.

Whilst the path was as plain as day to follow, it would appear that there was some confusion among our number about which way to walk - or indeed how to walk at all. Perhaps it was a hangover (literally) from the night before.

Soon the day became warmer and the views got better and it was turning out to be quite pleasant.

And then we rerached the lock gate that we had to use to cross the canal to wend our way back to the cars. This gave us an opportunity for a bridge photo - even though I think that strictly speaking it wasn't a bridge. I actually took three photos of this, but in not one of these was everyone looking at the camera. It just goes to show that the minute you retire all your managerial authority disappears!

It is not often that you see an exotic bird in Inverness, but there was crane at the side of the canal with a three ton limit, so it said. Always look up they taught me at Planning school - that's where the interesting bits are.

Some interesting shapes on the crane.

Soon we reached the River Ness and a fine view it was too. Indeed Mac and Janet were tempted to swim across to get home, but they didn't have towels, so declined in the end.

We're at the weir.

And so back to the start through the pitches to the end of the walk - which is also the start of the competition!

All of the photos that follow to the end, including the one below are clues in the game. When Sharon and I tested out the walk we decided that people would need some mental stimulus - conversation was unlikely to do it so we thought that walkers could look for things that spelt out the word DINOSAUR. That is, the first letter of things you can see on the walk would be one of the letters in the word DINOSAUR. All the photos below are numbered and something in them will help make the word. It is fair to say that some of these clues are a bit obscure, but they will work. The winner of a bottle of something sparkling will be the person who can give me the greatest number of "spellings" of DINOSAUR.

As you will see, there are more photos than there are letters in DINOSAUR - at least I hope you notice this. Not only that, some of the photos have more than one interpretation, so that there are at least 18 letters available and only Mac knows how many combinations that gives. For example if the photo was of a dog with a stick you could get the letters D and S. So good luck. You can tell I have a bit more time on my hands these days!

In true competition style, it is my game, so my word is final.

So here goes - the first one is quite easy just to get you started.

PHOTO 1
PHOTO 2