Nice car.

This nice old "49" Chevy was waiting in the queue for the ferry at Dunquerke. It was one of the nicest custom cars I have ever seen. A lowrider with all the hydraulics, and the roof chopped by about 6inches. The owner said he spent more time fixing her than driving her but thats the breaks..........

Bruges.

Sandra and I went to the cinema a few weeks ago and watched "In Bruges" with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes. The movie was a bit dreary but the city of Bruges looked great, so we decided to pay it a visit. Its a beautiful city with lots of museums, churches and canals. It also has a very difficult one way system and some very long street names. We were to be staying at the Ensor Hotel, named after the famous Belgian painter, James Ensor. The Ensor is on a street called Speelmansrei but Sandra navigated us to Speelmanstrasse, nowhere near the Ensor. We were so tired and stressed by the time we got to the hotel that all we wanted was a long, cold beer see above. A few of these and we were ready for some food. It was very late by this time so we found some street food in the form of shawarma kebabs. This is thick, crusty Belgian bread filled with barbecued chicken, salad and very spicy chilli mayo. Hot on the way in, hot on the way out next morning.

The first place of interest was the Chocolate Museum.







Dogs only cock their leg to pee, not to poo, but they had the right idea.


The sculptures are made of fine belgian chocolate. The Easter Egg is aprox 6 ft tall.

Sculptures in white chocolate that looked like fine percelain.

This is the steeple that poor old Brendan Gleeson had to chuck himself out of in the movie, and the bell mechanism. In truth, the bell tower is jump proof due to the stainless steel mesh.

This is the view from our hotel balcony. There were pike and carp present, should have taken a rod....

Bruges.

Sandra and I are off to Bruges this weekend, for some Christmas shopping. We are also going to stock up on wine, beer and probably some nice stinky cheese, pates etc. I've been very busy of late, and regretfully neglecting my blog. I'll take some nice pics when we are in Belgium, and post them up next week. Watch this space...........

First decent fish for a while.

Not a monster but a very welcome fish at about 11.5lbs. She was caught, quickly unhooked and carefully returned unharmed to a small, vary narrow loch not far from where I live. I'll be spending a wee bit of time there over the winter. This is the time of year when pike start feeding hard, preparing themselves for lean times over the worst part of winter, and precluding spawning/mating in the spring.

Hope this is the shape of things to come.

Loch Oich last weekend.

The Inverness Open Pike Competition.

Thirty Five brave souls stuck it out for eight hours of four seasons in one day. None of my group of seven caught a fish but we had a good day, and a nice outdoor lunch. In between the storms there were some spectacular rainbows.

Out of the 35 anglers only 5 fish were caught. Tournament was won by a catch of 2 fish for a weight of less than 10 pounds.

There's always next year........