´óÏó´«Ã½

After a lovely weekend at the Loch Ness marathon, I can see why the big boss keeps banging on about Inverness.

On our way to the marathon start, we had driven less than ten minutes out of the city centre when I was blown away by the scenery. The picture aboveÌý was taken at around 7am on Sunday morning. I'd have no problems getting up early on a Sunday morning if the views outside the front door looked like that.

The much talked about 'highland hospitality' does exist and one great example were the women who were out in the cold and dark of Sunday morning setting up their steaming urns so they could hand out free tea and coffee to all the runners.

It was a day to remember for the thousands of folk who ran in the marathon,10k and 5k. The number of entrants broke all previous records which meant that in my role as commentator I had to find at least three thousand ways to say 'well done'.

I do have one of those voices that travels as you'll hear if you listen to from my ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland colleague, Jackie O' Brien. I have to apologise to Jackie who spent the day gathering material for her radio report. In every interview she did and over every line she spoke all you can hear is my voice booming out in the background! I really need to get my internal volume control sorted out...