Did i ever tell you about the time i fell down a volcano...

People will often tell you that travel broadens the mind. Billy Connolly once commented that conversely, travel narrows the mind, and the drums never stop. Our recent travels have been a great experience, and we're looking forward to our next trip over the water to North America (as opposed to 'doon the water' to Dunoon for a fish tea). During the tour, Carey reminded me of one of my previous travel experiences, and i suggested i share it with you, so here we go...

1983 was an interesting year for travel for me, it also turned out to be an interesting year for travel mishaps.

It started in the January, the family were going to New Zealand to visit relatives. "You're representing your country", my mother told me,"You'll need to wear your kilt". I argued that surely a Scotland Football shirt would allow me to represent my country equally well, but apparently not, so the kilt it was, 11 years old and forced to wear kilt whilst traveling halfway across the globe. I had to wear it for the long haul flight over, and on arrival in NZ, experienced the joy of being gauped by a large number of people awaiting the new arrivals, many of whom were holding those cards with people's names on them. Magic!

We flew into Auckland, but Were heading to Wellington. There was time to kill before our connecting flight, so my Cousins who lived in Auckland met us and took us on a quick tour around the city. The pinnacle of our first visit was being driven to the top of a volcano (now extinct) Mount Eden (i think it was) in the middle of the city. There were impressive views of the city around us, but for me, the highlight was gazing down into the huge crater in the middle of this mountain where the volcano had erupted. I decided i should go down to the bottom of the crater so when i got home i could tell all my friends that i had stood inside a volcano.

Off i went, jogging off downwards into the middle of the crater, excited at the prospect of being in the middle of a volcano. I was about a third of the way down when i realised that it was slightly steeper than i had given it credit for. I was getting faster and faster and very quickly realised that i was incapable of keeping up this speed for much longer without decking it spectacularly. Deck it spectacularly i did, tripping over a clump of grass. Normally, tripping over with a host of tourists watching you and landing on your head would be a touch embarrassing, but i had built up a fair bit of speed, and landing on my head was followed by rocketing on down the steep incline towards the bottom of the crater, and my embarrassment was to continue for a bit longer. I kept rolling until i came to a halt at the bottom. Then of course i had to clamber back out with said tourists still watching me. There is actually Super 8 footage of my re-emergence from the crater somewhere (thanks Mum) as a permanent record of my fall.

The worst thing of all though wasn't the indignity of the fall, nor even the bruises that were sustained during it, but i lost my sporran. Gutted.

The rest of the year was quite quiet in comparison. I did go on a 'foreign visit' with the scouts that summer, traveling round bits of Europe. I managed to get electrocuted on a concrete barge on the Seinne, get water blister burns on the Italian Riviera, and drop my camera from a ski lift in Switzerland... but that's another story.

Gav