Winter reflections on life and all that jazz.

Well the snow is going.
For the while at least.
In a usual year we have a bit of snow late November/ early December and then a large fall around February time, so it will be interesting to see what happens between now and Spring.

Although to be fair today was almost spring like.
Enough snow has melted to be able to do some work on the veggie garden, and I spent an hour forking over and adding much to the bed that the garlic is going in (late but..well). When the sun came out I actually had to take my fleece off!
Be moaning about heatstroke soon ;)

Anyway, today we took the kids out to the Bennachie Centre on the other side of the mountain.
Now to be honest we have all gone a little stir crazy the last month, what with being snowed in and all, and as the weather had broken and the temp was up we decided to go for it.
The child grill, I mean DOG grill of course..essential bit of kit ;)

Am I the only one who's kids moan and whinge about going for a walk but when you make them they have the best time?

They love this place because of the free visitor centre, a huge open plan modern wooden cabin with lots of tree and animal related information, interactive touchscreens, webcam hides the works.



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The walk as always was great, and the higher up the mountain we got the more snow was still about!
We stuck to one of the lower trails as it was late in the afternoon by the time we got there but the kids went free running through the woods at the side of the trail, jumping over ditches and logs and generally running off 4 weeks of house arrest





We talked about our car-less plans while out.
Obviously we had driven for this trip, the ice still thick in places, the daylight fading, the kids...well, being kids.
The plan had been to try and live car-less over the winter with a long term view of going completely car-less had we got on ok.
I think on reflection this is an un-realistic plan.
Don't get me wrong, our commitment to cycling and public transport remain, but the factors that rally against us, the isolated location, the lack of affordable public transport, the yucky winter weather (and lack of infrastructure for clearing roads etc) all conspire against winter car-less-ness.

There are also the kids to take into account.
If it was just me and Kim many things would be simpler. For example we have a wedding to go to in the spring. For two adults it would be easy and cheap to bus down south. With the kids though? For one thing it is a horrible HORRIBLE journey (14 hrs, late night wait in Glasgow bus station, no security and lots of drunks. toilet too unspeakable to think of ..and that's is it all goes well!), but the big issue is not our lack of "adventurous spirit" but pure finances. Seriously, it is cheaper for us to hire a car for a WEEK than it is to take 5 people on a bus.
There is something fundamentally wrong with that I think.
This same problem crops up locally as well.
Two train tickets to Aberdeen is do-able, five is beyond our means.

Bottom line is we can't keep the kids cooped up all winter only going from home to school and back again.

Our revised plan is this.
Our commitment to cycling spring through Autumn (and on suitable winter days also) is still strong. There are lots of places available in the locality to visit and we plan to do the lot this year.
The landrover stays. In the depths of winter when snow and ice are on the ground and daylight appears around 9.30 am and goes away just after lunch, we need a life line to the "outside world".
We already spent more time on bikes since we started than in the landrover so we still have credit as it were.
A once a week trip to a nice walk with some chips for dinner on the way home are surely not too much for kids to ask?

So its all good.
Our plans evolve and bend and change as needed.
After all, who wants to be so pure that your kids grow up to be raging consumers and petrol heads because they never got to do anything when they where growing up.
If it was just me and Kim we could hibernate for the winter, watch DVD's listen to the radio, chat, read.
But we have to remember that we share our house with three other people, lively curious, insatiable children who will not rest for winter and are not easily fobbed off with another game of snap.

Roll on spring :)