Jacquetta

I am delighted to announce the arrival of another grand-daughter, born to Anna and Sandy on Sunday 15 January in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Charlotte Emme Bloomer arrived, after giving her mother a hard time for over 24 hours, at 2.38 pm with a birth weight of 8 pounds 4 ounces. We were particularly pleased to hear Sandy's voice about ten minutes later, since we had already left Landrick and were driving to the airport en route for Costa RIca via Madrid. It was deeply reassuring to know that mother and baby were both doing well before we flew, even though we were sad that she didn't arrive in time for us to meet her. However, she did time her birth to coincide with her second cousin Jago's first birthday, which was auspicious. This entry has been delayed by our subsequent travels, but I hope any friends who read the good news here will understand why we weren't able to phone round before we left.

Tuesday's flight from Madrid reached San Jose 12 hours later. Wednesday's flight took us to Palmar Sur then by speedboat along the Rio Sierpe spotting cayman, squirrel monkeys and osprey among the mangrove swamps. Arrrival at Casa Corcovado is at a rocky bay: you jump off the beached boat into shallow water with Pacific breakers, so you don't expect to stay dry. The final stage of our journey was in a tractor-pulled trailer up to the stunningly beautiful Casa Corcovado Jungle Lodge. It's taken a couple of days to find free time that coincided with working wifi in the Manager's lodge, so blogging isn't as easy as usual, to put it mildly. But from the heart of the jungle on Costa RIca's pacific coast, we welcome Charlotte to our family.

I set off from Landrick early this morning, and parked my car at Dollar at first light, to set off up Dollar Glen and through the Ochils:

From Castle Campbell, a climb took me up and alongside Glenquey Reservoir before dropping down to Glendevon. A further climb took me up the Cadgers' Way to Cadgers' Yett (gate), the watershed at 435 m (1425 ft), spoiled only by the ugly intrusion of Green Knowes wind turbines: the scattered white dots (sheep) convey the scale.

After a pathless section, and a bold leap across the Coul Burn which was in spate, I climbed again briefly towards the glorious wilderness of Corb Glen:

After the descent to the B934 near Corb Bridge, Keir kindly collected me and ran me back to Dollar. What a wonderful way to start this new year: I now feel a modest sense of achievement, and energised from the novelty of the route.

For this itinerary, I am indebted to Paul Prescott, of Callander Ramblers, whose book on the Mary Queen of Scots Way we will be publishing later this year. His route is unwaymarked, and has some adventurous bits, but in the course of the last four years he has managed to connect Arrochar on Loch Long with St Andrews on the North Sea, thus crossing Scotland from west to east in a 107-mile route that is almost entirely offroad.

When the children were young and our family ski-ing holiday overlapped New Year, we were faced with the problem of timing, not wanting overtired children on our hands until the local midnight, let alone for them to miss out on ski-ing next morning. Since New Year in France would have translated to 11pm under Greenwich Mean Time, we concluded that we should ignore the constraint of longitude and celebrate New Year at whatever time it suited us. This family tradition has proved very useful over the years.

Since we had 5-year old Amy, and her mother, with us at Landrick this Hogmanay, we felt that 9 pm would be about right to open the bubbly and exchange the greetings, so we lighted upon Moscow as a location for 3 hours ahead. We all exchanged "С Новым Годом (S novim godom)" and that allowed us to be asleep soon after 10 pm. Which may sound really boring, but with Amy's routine and my need for a seriously early start next day, it made a lot of sense.

What is my point? Tradition may be better adapted than slavishly adopted.

Keir was live on Good Morning Scotland this morning: the interview (while still available) lasts for 3 minutes from 2 hrs 16 min to 2 hrs 19 min. Speaking as Chairman of the new Commission on School Reform, he explained its agenda to examine key aspects of Scottish schooling. The story is also carried by the Herald, Scotsman, Times, Telegraph and Daily Express and was on BBC Scotland TV news – only to be dislodged later by the impending arrival of two giant pandas: you can't deny that they are more photogenic. Anyway, here is Keir's short article in the Scotsman, and their news story.

OECD's recently released PISA international comparison reports that the world's most effective schools are in Shanghai – as measured by attainment in reading, maths and science. This alone should be enough to undermine lingering complacency. Keir conceded that international comparisons are never easy, and anyway don't tell the whole story. But the Commission is setting out to identify how Scotland can improve. Our schools need to help to sustain our fast-changing economy, and somebody needs to monitor how Curriculum for Excellence is working in practice.

We (Rucksack Readers) supported the Dundee Mountain Film Festival again this year. It's the UK's longest-running such event and next year (23-4.11.2012) will be its 30th. I enjoy being out of the office, meeting people and selling direct to real customers in the intervals, but I also greatly enjoy the lectures and movies that make up the main programme. The big names for 2011 were Mark Beaumont and Peter Habeler, neatly addressing both younger and older generations.

In contrast to the global fame of those two, a theme of forgotten and unsung heroes emerged. The 2002 Irish film which came second in the People's Choice vote was about Tom Crean (1877-1938) – the unfailingly cheerful hero of so many Antarctic expeditions with Scott and Shackleton. He retired to run a pub, the famous South Pole Inn of Anascaul, which I visited while working on our Dingle Way book. I bought Michael Smith's brilliant biography at his pub and reread it after seeing the author in this movie on Friday night.

I'd never heard of Alexander Kellas until his biographer, Ian R Mitchell, gave a lively lecture about him the next day, based on Prelude to Everest. In 1921 Kellas was the first to die, tragically young, on an Everest expedition. Born in Aberdeen and weather-hardened on Ben Nevis and the Cairngorms, he was the first ascender of several Himalayan peaks over 20,000 ft. In addition to his mountaineering records, he was a pioneer of high-altitude physiology. He had predicted that exceptionally acclimatised, fit humans would be able to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen. He even predicted correctly how much slower the final ascent rate would be than the climbing rate at sea level.

This was a perfect cue for my question to Peter Habeler, who gave a superbly illustrated lecture about his climbing life on Saturday evenin. "In 1978, when he and Messner became the first men to summit Everest without oxygen, did they actually know whether it was possible? Medical opinion at the time was divided, but did they know about Kellas's work?" His answer was emphatic: he had never heard of Kellas until Mitchell's lecture that very afternoon and he had been fascinated by this prescient prediction from 60 years ago. So kudos to DMFF for assembling such an interesting programme and finding contributions from which the great Peter Habeler learned something new!

It's nearly two years since snow chains entered my life, in January 2010. The size 10s I had bought for the Jaguar X-type were hard to fit first time around, which I put down to my inexperience. But second time around they were nearly impossible, so by November 2010 I had decided they were one size too small. Since they were by this time firmly and usefully in place, nothing happened until January when the 35-minute struggle to remove them at 4.30 am in heavy snow en route for the airport (admittedly after they had been frozen/rusted in place for two months) very nearly cost us our plane to Bangkok. We made the airport only after the flight had started to board, and our heart rates didn't return to normal until half an hour after take-off.

I was determined to avoid a repeat performance this winter. My supplier Snowchains Europroducts' offers a part-exchange scheme so I bought a pair of size 11s. It was deeply disappointing to find they were too loose, and the offchance of a chain flying off the wheel spells damage or even danger. After many phone calls and emailed photographs, they suggested the solution could be to shorten the perimeter chain to achieve what I now think of as size 10.5. Andrew of Snowchains made it sound easy: you open up a link, move the chain along, refit the chain and if it's a good fit simply close the link, cut off the surplus and the job is done. Here is the test fit, which had to be done on carpet so I could still return the chains if this all failed:

and here's a close up showing the dangling blue links:

This was great progress: the chains were now a doddle to fit and remove, and my friend Andrew at Snowchains was enthusiastic about my photos. He said they showed as good a fit as they achieve at their centre in Kent and almost made me feel I could apply for a job! However, I felt that our front tyres could do with an upgrade, and fearing that the new tyres might be slightly different in size from the worn ones that they would replace, I thought I should retest the chains before cutting any links. So this morning I took my carpet, chains and tools to J K Tyres of Springkerse so as to refit the chains after the new tyres were in place. On the driveway outside, the task was slightly harder than before, but only very slightly and not remotely like the nightmare of the size 10s. Each chain was on and off inside three minutes. They kindly helped by cutting through the spare links for me: this was hard enough to break one pair of their snips and took a lot of hammering and manual strength using a second, stronger pair. I was suitably grateful.

So now I have all-season Klebers on the front axle and, after only 22 months, size 10.5 chains that I can both fit and remove. Conclusions? Probably it won't snow at all this winter. Will I care? No: I shall take great delight in having spared everybody a snowy winter by finally having solved my chains problem. And, as with assembling flatpack furniture, I feel I have acquired some hard-won knowledge which may never, ever be useful to me again. It includes the unwelcome discovery that 225x45x17 may sound like a precise tyre measurement, but tyre sizes vary more than chains manufacturers realise!

I spent Friday at the Scottish Countryside Access Network event in Perth, a triennial event that happened to be timely for our looking at waymarking options for the Rob Roy Way long-distance walk. We also agreed to set up a management group for the route and it will have its inaugural meeting later this month, just after we return from Mexico via New York, so I've been hastily compiling agendas. And because of our impending trip it was great to enjoy some family company before we leave on Wednesday.

Sandy and Anna joined us that evening for dinner by arrangement, as did Amy (unexpectedly, her poor mother Helen having fallen ill). So we all had a lively and relaxed evening and I for one retired early to share a dreamless sleep with Amy.

Since the next day was that glorious cold crisp weather that can make November such a delight, I suggested we all walk to the Sheriffmuir Inn for lunch. It's a lovely walk with fine views and some very rough bits which suggest that not many people know the direct route from Landrick any more. I was off-duty camera-wise but delighted that Anna took a few. Here she captured us on the oak-lined path up from Dykedale. The red things in Keir's pockets are his slippers, essential lunch equipment:

And here's one I took on the borrowed iPhone of the lovely couple (soon to be three), relaxed in the autumn sunshine:

Not long after they returned to Edinburgh, we had a visit from Laochan, the handsome black labrador from our neighbours at the farmhouse, who were going out while firework noise was expected. Laochan apparently needed our company (or maybe our neighbours think that we need his?). Anyway, he seems quite correctly to regard Landrick as his second home. We were thrilled to have both Amy and Helen (by then somewhat recovered) here on Sunday, but maybe not as thrilled as Amy was to find Laochan. She really loves him:

I'm proud to be a member of the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild and have just spent the weekend with my colleagues at our AGM at Plas y Brenin. I wasn't well organised, and it was only when my friend Sheila (who has a nearby cottage in Capel Garmon) asked me in the car on Friday what I was doing the next day that I remembered I had opted for a workshop on hill-walking photography. And had managed to leave my G1 camera behind ...

This was friend-in-need time, and once I realised that her recently-acquired G3 was in the car, she appeared to accept that my need was greater than hers. Her printed manual wasn't to hand but the interface wasn't too far removed from the G1 and I got through the next day managing (just about) to complete the range of tasks set, from slow shutter speed to fast, shallow depth of field to large, with panning, differential focus and creative placement of a figure in a landscape.

Dave Willis led our workshop, and he is not only a talented photographer but also a really good teacher. To most people, a grey, drizzling end-October Saturday morning would seem unrpromising photographically, but Dave took a dozen of us out walking, mixed-ability landscape photographer wannabes, put us in pairs and put our camera skills through our paces. He also gave us the great benefit of his handouts, and since they seem to be publicly available I see no reason not to share them: see part 1 and part 2

Thanks, Dave, for sharing. And thanks, Sheila, for sharing your camera, although it turned out to have been a more expensive weekend than I realised, because I've just bought a G3 which (apart from its battery life) is better in several ways than the G1.

A feature of living at Landrick is the proximity of wildlife, not always at convenient times. Today, a bird had somehow got into the attic above our kitchen and, hearing its frantic flapping I opened the hatch. A beautiful blue tit emerged and vigorously tried to beat its brains out against an unopenable window. It took Keir's gentle touch to capture it in his cupped hands while perched dangerously on a stool. I suggested the table outside as a safe haven for it to recover from its trauma.

And then I remembered that I had just bought a lovely, lightweight telephoto lens (45-175 mm) for my G1 camera, so I dashed to the office and stalked the bemused bird, gradually closing in from a long distance. Here is my best effort, taken from just a metre, the beautiful bird filling the frame. That's what I call payback! Immediately after this snap, the bird flew off as if nothing had happened.

Last Friday, I was privileged to be included in the family funeral gathering to celebrate the life of this great British hero – an intensely private, modest man. John McCallum's extraordinary story could not be told for decades because of the Official Secrets Act, but finally was published in his book The Long Way Home (Birlinn, 2005). It's an account of an incredibly daring escape by three Glasgow-born prisoners of war, by chance taking them through Zagan on the day of the famous (and tragically unsuccessful) "Great Escape" of 25 March 1944. It is also the moving story of his intense, doomed romance with a very brave and self-sacrificing German woman.

Today's Herald carries the obituary that I finished writing yesterday. I had started with 500 words, fearing that they would cut it severely, but in the event they telephoned to ask for more. In my professional career as a writer, I've never had a newspaper ask for more words before, so I was delighted to extend it. You can read it here.

There are details of his book on Birlinn's website. Let's hope that they reprint it before his posthumous TV appearance fuels further demand. David Jason's Great Escapes includes an interview with him, and will be aired on ITV1 on Armistice Day this year.

It's almost exactly five years since my father died, and although they were from very different backgrounds, he and John McCallum had a number of personal qualities in common: integrity, stoicism, longevity and great resourcefulness. Although both are now dead, their lives and our memories of them will continue to affect those of us who were lucky enough to know them. May they rest in peace.