The Firth of Forth

What a beautiful morning. A bit of frost, blue sky and very still. Unfortunately, unlike the Firth of Forth, my head wasn't a sea of tranquillity! I lost a train ticket, had a panic, found the train ticket and stopped panicking. A consistent theme of the morning was me losing stuff!

We headed down to Portobello relatively early for...... a swim in the Firth of Forth! Rosemary has been swimming with a group of rather eccentric open-water swimmers and though I would fit in! I did. Some of these intrepid swimmers didn't have wetsuits on! It was 10.4ºC for goodness sake! It took me a good bit of time to acclimatise even with a good few mm of neoprene to insulate me. I suffered from ice-cream head, my dodgy wrist (from a fall from a horse, before you call me a you know what) went really sore, the pain dissipated and then my non-dodgy wrist went really sore. Rosemary found this hilarious and I ended up giggling with her through the pain.... an experience like hiccupping and burping at the same time!

After a quick shower in Porty pool, we headed to The Espy, a pub cum cafe, for brunch! The company was great and they even laughed at my jokes. Talk went from being gardening gorillas, to Jim nearly being eaten by a hippo (true story) to his ambition of being an undertaker! Rosemary's granola arrived to further hilarity! She was given a whole box of the stuff, with a cafetiere of hot milk which was only sufficient for one quarter of the serving. I ate some, she ate even more but we still left with a rather large doggy bag of the stuff.

The pedal home, accompanied by Jim, was fun if a little sedentary. That suited me though as I had my Brompton and the weather was perfect for such a civilised ride. After chilling for a bit, I jumped on a bus into town, resplendent in my running kit! I had a run planned on Arthur's Seat as part of my preparation for the Snowman Triathlon next week. This run involves running up an 872m mountain and down again, and Edinburgh's famous hill was the best I had available to practice for the challenge. Training, even when tough, is so much fun in brilliant weather and I managed to get nearly 300m of ascent in too.

Then, I jogged through the tourists on the High Street then to Artisan Roast for an espresso. The barista forgot about me for ages, but was most apologetic when he realised. I got my coffee on the house. It was worth waiting for; fruity, sweet and just enough acidity. I think it was their Janzoon blend. Then, it was a quick visit to Real Foods for some shopping. As a born again veggie, I love that shop.

I was still hyper when I got home and as Rosemary had to phone her Mum, I headed down to the harbour to get a Blip image. The sky wasn't as stunning as last night, but it was still pretty good! The day ended perfectly with an amazing home-made mushroom, stilton and peppercorn pie, made by my equally fine lady! Oh... and a wee bit ice-cream to neutralise the richness of the pie!