There’s my big daft face, starting my blog posts off as usual. I’ve been partying too much lately and that hungover face above is the reason for the next post – Kirk is getting fit! Apart from slipping off the wagon a few times with the odd takeaway, I’ve not been doing too badly at eating less, eating well and exercising. Freshers is just around the corner at work and I’m going straight to Spain after it so I need to whip my ass into shape quickly.

I love the gym and going to classes, but sometimes the best exercise is getting out in the rare sunshine with friends and exploring. McKay and I did just that and ended up doing over 11K in a few hours. We headed from mine to Toast to fill up on a big breakfast, I really should do a post on there because I’m such a regular.

A few comedic stretches and we were off through Riverside, on to Cambuskenneth with a little pit stop at the Abbey.

The Wallace Monument was our final destination and we managed to pick the hardest way to get to the ticket office, as well as the warmest day for climbing the hill to it. It was about 19 degrees in the shade of the trees and it’s safe to say we worked hard!

During Summer, they put on a little woodland tour with some wonderful actors – we met Wallace! It’s a must if you’re a tourist and it was certainly a nice little refresher course on my local history.

Prepare yourself for quite the spinny stairs climb once you’re inside, if you get dizzy easily then it’s not for you! There are levels every few floors where you can stop and read about the incredibly rich history of the area, see Wallace’s sword and even crack out a (very poor) Y stand…

It’s definitely worth the climb for the views from the top alone. It’s quite reasonably priced if like me you’ve managed to get yourself an NUS card and live as a perpetual student. We also made friends with two lovely American men from Virginia and I can’t lie, I might have slightly fallen in love with one of them. It clearly wasn’t meant to be as we popped into the Coo for a Sunday evening night-cap to find that they had been in (on my recommendation) only an hour before!

I was pretty shattered by the time we walked back down, back into Stirling and up the stairs to my flat, slept like a baby! It’s nice to visit local historic sites and team it up with some good exercise, what’s near you?

More info here – www.nationalwallacemonument.com Oh and if you fancy it – go on a nice day, it’s rubbish when it’s cloudy.