Sparky was "on top of the world".

I had not realised that several days have passed since my last update, been busy trying to set up a new computer and losing hair and sleep in the process. However, the bold Sparky Mark arrived on the doorstep last night after his adventure in Nepal where he did the twelve day expedition to the Everest Base Camp. So whilst looking at his collection of super photographs I downloaded his set and have taken the liberty of

using the attached - Mark will use lots of the others on his own blog.

He took his RA500 "T" shirt and remembered to pose at the base camp, and you can just make out Mount Everest in the background (on the right with cloud cover). Near the base camp there was three feet of snow during the night before the group arrived, and with nighttime temperatures of -20 they did not want to hang about.

There was no truth in the story that Mark fell in love with the local Yak !!!, as they cannot survive at lower altitudes it could not be brought back to Penicuik .

His most frightening moments were the landing and take off from the most dangerous airport in the World - we saw this recently on a TV documentary - shortest runway over the edge of a cliff, and even worse trying to land !! So adrenalin is "brown" right enough, perhaps that is why we he drank my Drambuie last night, still recovering - maybe , but well done Mark, Davy his pal and the other seven in the group.

Will need to try and play catch up, however, I have been feeling better these days and even had the "steed of steel" out for a run yesterday. I had planned on doing this at the weekend but with the sunshine and warm weather I had a constructive couple of days in the garden - only upset was finding that my latest power cleaner was not working. That is three in three years, all working fine before winter and then not working when needed.