So, I’m writing just a one-week update for the first time in a long time, mainly because I’ll be away for the next 3 weeks, first on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition, then straight out to a World Challenge expedition to Sri Lanka, so I wanted to write about this week now.

This week has been very busy with work, leading Duke of Edinburgh expeditions. Saturday and Sunday saw a Bronze assessment expedition up near Ben Vorlich. This involved 2-days walking in glorious sunshine and one night camping among the midges. Despite getting into my tent in lightening quick time, through a cloud of midges, the next 10 minutes were spent squishing a large number of the little buggers that had managed to sneak in with me, and my new one-man tent is now decorated with little black squidge marks. As this was an assessment, I was remotely supervising the group, which was particularly fun on the first day, as we started them off walking, had time to get an ice-cream in Comrie, and then drove alongside the opposite site of valley to their pathway and spied on them with binoculars. When then took a short walk down to a common navigational error junction, and hid in the bushes to watch them pass. I felt like a spy!
​
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday followed (as they often do, after Saturday and Sunday) with a Silver practice expedition. I had a lovely group of 5 girls, and spend some time teaching them navigation skills, although they were already fairly competent from their bronze. This also involved 2 nights out in my tent, bringing my nights spent outside to 11. I also got to spend considerable time with the other leader, Bill, who counts as one of my interesting people. He is an ex-police chief inspector and now works part-time on his outdoor business and spends the rest of his time in a little cottage north of Inverness. He has strong (positive) opinions on encouraging women in the workplace and is an enthusiastic outdoor instructor, if a little ‘old-school.’ He also spent much of the down-time on expeditions napping.

The weather was stunningly beautiful throughout, with sunshine and blue skies, except for one day of thunder and lightning, which was less good...

In an effort to up my colouring count, I took my small colouring book on both expeditions, much to the bemusement of the other leaders and have nearly completed another picture – however, my pink pencil broke, so I have a few bits left to finish off. What a hardcore mountaineering instructor I am…..

The Friday before embarking on my DofE work, I had the opportunity to cook a Thai Green curry – again one of the Simply Cook recipes. It was pretty tasty, although I bulked it out with a bit too much veg, so the flavour was diluted somewhat.
​
The Sunday night in between expeditions was a chance for a nice dinner out with Matt, where we tried out another restaurant – Café Andaluz – a tapas restaurant on George Street. The food was lovely, accompanied by the traditional jug of sangria. We then stayed on to enjoy some cocktails, and I therefore got 2 new types of alcohol for my challenge. One was called Strawberry Punch with a Punch, which was a champagne base (I apparently have expensive taste.) The second one was called Lust, and combined Baileys with a butterscotch flavoured liqueur. It came in a shot glass, but it was delicious! This brings my total different types of alcohol to 29……!

Finally this week, I took another opportunity to treat myself from my virtual jar of 30p per day savings, and treated myself to a much needed haircut, costing the grand old Groupon price of £18! So, I also have a new hairstyle this week, bringing my total hairdos to 21.
​
Things I’ve learnt this week:

1. Even in Scotland, it is possible to get sunburn to the point of blisters on your skin. One of the DofE girls forgot to suncream her ears and ended up with a blister.
2. Being on top of a peak, and then walking down a ridge, in a storm of thunder and lightning, is indeed, in the words of Queen, very very frightening.
3. It’s possible to improve the flavour of Baileys! Already pretty tasty, by adding butterscotch to it, it’s fantastic!
4. I’m almost over my fear of the hairdressers. After a doorstop-fringe incident when I was 15, I have always been scared that hairdressers are going to hack your hair to pieces, even if they seem to know what they are talking about. Still, I put my trust in this hairdresser yesterday, even when she asked if I wanted my hair to look ‘choppy.’ No, I still don’t know what she meant. 

So I am once again writing about a 3 week block of time, as a) its been a busy few weeks, b) I’ve forgotten to write it and c) I’ve been binge watching some TV which seems to have the effect of time passing without me realising it. (Britain’s Got Talent, Marcella and Making a Murderer in case you’re interested – the latter two are highly recommended for thought-provoking, thrilling and suspense-filled drama.)

So, where to start? I’ll start with some networking events that I’ve attended, as they filled the early part of Week 29. I went to Cambridge Weight Plan meeting (I am a Cambridge Consultant as a part time business) and met lots of other Scotland-based consultants and heard from some of them about their own personal award-winning slimming stories. I’d like to tell you that I took inspiration and have been strict at dieting, but alas this is not the case. The next day, I attended an Expedition Preparation Conference for World Challenge, ahead of my upcoming expedition to Sri Lanka in June. This was a good opportunity to meet other expedition leaders and talk through some scenarios, adventures and get some tips.

The following weeks were also busy with networking events, with a meeting organised by Coachmatch with one of their main Scottish clients, as an opportunity for the client to meet some of the coaches. I then attended the Heartabiz networking morning, which is a group of ‘heart-centred’ business owners – I found this quite useful and have made a number of follow-up meetings with people that I met. I then also attended a Edinburgh Businesswoman’s Club meeting on ‘Turning Pressure into Power,’ run by a Sports Psychologist who predominantly works with competition horseriders. My final networking event was another Cambridge Training Day, focused on Building Your Business – some useful hints and tips picked up. This also gave an opportunity for an act of kindness, as one consultant had contacted me asking for a lift, and then found he was unable to make the training day, so I offered to pick up a spare workbook and spend some time with him to talk it through.
​
In the middle of May, I ran another Wellbeing Retreat with my yoga-instructor friend Lindsey. This led to a lot of cooking and baking activity. I made Parsnip and Apple Soup (thanks to Madeleine for the inspiration – it was lovely and not one I would naturally pick to try!) While making a butternut squash stew (that doesn’t count towards recipes as I’ve already done it) I was left with some spare butternut squash, so decided to try and impromptu Spicy Butternut Squash and Coconut stew. As this was unplanned, I didn’t have all the ingredients from the recipe book, so had to improvise on a few. Let it be noted that the amount of ‘chilli flakes’ needed to substitute for ‘one red chilli’ is significantly less than you might think…..The result was a tasty yet highly spicy soup. Note the difference in presentation for meal on my own, vs meal served to retreat guests. 

​From a baking point of view, I made some things I’ve made before for retreat, e.g. copious amounts of flapjack and a cheesecake. And I also made some of ‘Grandma’s Easter Biscuits’ (an old family recipe) of cinnamon and mixed spice biscuits. I had to make 2 batches, due to my friend Kristina coming to stay, seeing the first batch cooling and us both (mainly me) demonstrating a complete lack of will power and self-discipline when faced with warm-from-the-oven biscuits. I also made her one of the Simply Cook recipe – a Hungarian Goulash Soup……which seemed to be a posh way of saying Sausage Stew. Tasty though. 

The retreat went exceedingly well, with 4 lovely clients enjoying a weekend of yoga, walking and NLP coaching, some sunshine, lots of tea and cake. Nobody seemed to want to go home at the end of the weekend, so we went for an additional walk up to MacGregor’s Cave, did some yoga poses by a beautiful tranquil loch, and then went for lunch at Queen’s View café. All 4 clients were fascinating people, and I was privileged to share in some of their journey of self-discovery throughout the retreat. I won’t share any more than that here in the interests of confidentiality, but they are all counting towards my list of ‘interesting people’ met.
​
On retreat, I also managed to find some time to chill out and complete a page in my colouring book, bringing the total of coloured pictures to 11. More action needed here!

One of my challenge items was to save 30p a day in a jar and use it to treat myself. As money as been fairly tight as I’m still in the early days of building my business, plus the practicalities of having 30p in change each day, this has been more a virtual exercise than I had anticipated (there is no jar) but I did decided to tap into my virtual jar for a treat and bought a ticket to see Mary Poppins the Musical for £39. I am so glad that I did, as the show was spectacular. The show was full of magic and joy from start to finish, with particular mention going to: the magic handbag which things keep appearing from; sliding UP the banister; a fantastic, energetic tap dance routine to ChimChiminee, walking along the ceiling of the stage, and watching the whole show being signed for the hard of hearing by an extremely expressive interpreter, who got the loudest cheer from the audience during the bows. Go see it if you have the chance as it travels around the UK!

The weekend just gone saw a hive of activity on the challenge, with a 3-day munro-bagging expedition through the remote peninsular of Knoydart. This involved driving to Fort William (with dinner at Mhor Fish restaurant in Callendar on the way,) camping in Fort William (a night under canvass,) full Scottish breakfast in Nevis Sport (another restaurant,) an hour and 20 minute taxi journey around to our start point at Loch Quoich (with a hilarious attempt by the man in the booking office for the taxi firm to spell my name, and also where we were going, so we were met by a man looking for ‘Captalinco to Loch Oich.’ instead of 'Cat Trebilco to Loch Quoich.')

​We then set off into the wilderness, and climbed one munro on Day 1 (Gairich) and camped very close to the summit of the next one, Sgurr Mor (another night under canvass,) to be met by a fantastic morning view and a 5-minute walk to bag our next munro. We then climbed 3 more munros (Sgurr nan Coireachan, Garbh Choich Mor and Sgurr na Ciche,) complete with a thunder and hail storm on the top of the final (and most pointy) of the 3. We then had a looooooooong descent to camp another night next to Sourlies bothy where I got to style out my midge net... (my nights outside now at 8, and my munros at 16) before a morning walk to Inverie village, lunch in the Knoydart Pottery & Tearoom, a ferry across to Mallaig, dinner in The Fishmarket, and then a train back to Fort William to meet our car and drive home. Oh, and a bit of sunburn from the glorious weather. Phew! 

Matt’s birthday had also been the day before we set off, so I made him a chocolate cake, we ate half in the Fort William campsite, and then cursed how dense and heavy the cake was as we wrapped the rest up in tin foil to carry with us. Delicious though.
​
This period of 3 weeks also saw some progress on other challenge activities. I read a book! An actual adult book, called Dark Places, written by the same author who wrote Gone Girl. It was pretty good. I also saw 2 new films. One was the musical ‘Into the Woods’, and even though I love a good fairytale musical, I have to say that it is 2 hours of my life I am never getting back. As a boring and rather uncatchy start, I kept going in the hope it would get better and can categorically tell you that it does not……..don’t waste your time. This was slightly made up for by a trip to the cinema to see the new version of The Jungle Book, which is excellently done, with some very realistic animals. I had promised Matt that there was no singing in it (as I hadn’t seen any in the trailers) but I’m pleased that they did manage to sneak the 2 best Disney Jungle Book songs into the film, (and also secretly pleased as the withering looks of disgust I got from Matt, as I’m not sure he would have agreed to see it if he’d known.)

I tried out 2 more fitness classes at the gym. One was Latin Rythyms, which was pretty good fun, dancing around to salsa, swing and cha cha music, and the other one was ‘Body Attack.’ Although rather scary sounding, it wasn’t too bad – the group was really good fun, and I learnt that I need a better sports bra if I’m to do that class again. I did ache the next day though!
​
My hair has also seen a few different styles, as shown below. These range from the slightly sensible pony in a comb thingimydodah, pony tail clipped up by grabby clip thing, 2 pony tails giving the illusion of really long hair, to the slightly girly ‘I have a bow in my hair,’ to the rather ridiculous ‘been in old-fashioned curlers overnight.’

Things I’ve learnt in these 3 weeks:

1. The amount of chilli flakes needed to emulate one red chilli in a recipe is far less than you might think. Fire extinguisher on standby please!
2. The sign language for Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is even more interesting to watch than the superb choreography of the dancers.

    2b. I have now also just learn that Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is in the           Microsoft Word spell-checker, and that I can’t, in fact, spell it  correctly, as           the red, squiggly line of incorrectness appeared underneath my attempt             (now corrected)
3. My name sounds so much more exciting and mysterious as Captalinco.
4. My sports bras that I bought several (perhaps 10) years ago are no longer fulfilling their purpose.
5. Despite my previous belief, not all musicals are worth watching!