Go on.. you went on a date with her didn't you? It's alright Colin, were all mates here. You can tell us.
Nope, not that woman!
I was interested in a mountain biker but she turned out to be already seeing somebody she'd met earlier.
There was a doctor who sounded really nice, but we never met - she wrote to me to say that she'd met a hunky doctor at a New Year's Eve party so I wished her well and that was that.
Then there were 3 or 4 women who wrote this kind of thing in their profiles:
"Please, please, please write to me - I'd love to hear from you! I promise to reply to all messages!"
So, I'd write friendly messages telling them a bit about me, my Pennine bike rides and walks. I asked about them, the hobbies that they had mentioned in their profiles, and so on. Nothing heavy, or weird, no reason for them not to reply but there was not a squeak out of them! Their status showed them online all the time, and that they had read their messages, but they couldn't be bothered to even write
"Thanks for your message. I appreciate it, but I don't think we'd be suited. Good luck - I hope that you find someone!" I was pretty peed off with them and could see exactly why they were having to spend a lot of time online trying to find partners!
I exchanged messages with a couple of interesting women, even though I knew that we would never meet.
I did meet one woman who was extremely intelligent, and very attractive but things didn't work out. We gave up on it, but met a few more times as friends before she found someone on the same agency and married him!
I was astounded by how many women's total ambition in life seemed to snuggling in front of an open fire, eating chocolate, drinking red wine and watching a Rom Com! (I'm not saying that isn't a nice thing to do, but when you only have so many words to describe yourself, is that really all you have to say!)
One woman's profile picture was of her thrusting her beautiful 5 year old daughter towards the camera. The woman's profile said hardly anything about herself, but focussed on her children. I actually did write to her because I was really concerned that her whole profile was like an open invitation to paedophiles! I said that she was obviously very proud of her kids and wanted to meet a man who would be a good father figure but really, she needed to be more careful online. She thanked me and changed the profile. She removed the pictures of her kids and toned down any references to them.
There was one other woman that I wrote to for over 3 years before finally speaking to her and meeting up. We'd already decided that we were not interested romantically, but we became good friends and still are more than 10 years later. I've had 3 great walking/cycling holidays with her plus lots of days out.
That photo was taken in June this year, from the road to Port Appin, between Oban and Fort William. Castle Stalker is in the background, as featured at the end of
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.