After half a week of on-off-on snow in Edinburgh and weather warnings and blocked roads on Friday night, me and Nobby headed up to Glanshee in the replacement tazmobile - the journey up was quite exciting - the last few miles up from Blairgowrie was a minefield of deep slush filled potholes which if you hit at anything more than 5mph they turned into geysirs of slush up the windscreen and over the roof followed by 10 seconds of zero visibility, after the 15th time it got a bit scary

The road was closed at the Spittal of Glenshee but the bunkhouse was on the snow-free side - the road was supposed to be open at 6am but the powers that be in various council incompetence departments meant that at 9am there was a 2 mile queue of cars all waiting for the cops to turn up, perform a risk assessment and publish in 15 well known languages including Old Icelandic, Sumerian and C++, open the gate and convoy drive up the pass to the ski centre- it's times like that which make you wonder how Scotland actually manages to have a tourist industry...

Despite the initial chaos, the Glenshee folk pulled out all the stops and about half the runs were open - me and Nobby spent the rest of the day zooming down the various blue and green Sunnyside runs (remember that the standard piste grades get a bit superfluous in Scotland due to the usual splattering of icy patches, rocks, bewildred ptarmigans etc etc) - the conditions were good old Scottish - a full-on blizzard at times with relative calm periods of wind-blown ice bits interspersed with the sound of lonely snowhares looking for a casserole dish

After a quick stop for curry pie - we headed over to the Cainwell side, where unfortunately we got stuck in a queue for the access button lift behind an inpatient dad and his young son who hadnt quite mastered the art of button lift riding - that'll be another child put off winter sports for life then - the day was all set up for a grandstand finish until Nobby skied full speed into a snow drift and lost one of his contac lenses in the resultant face plant - I still got beaten down the final red run by a semi blind, curry pie exhaling lardarse

Ace day!