Thermal

The weekend before last we went for a walk (though that’s understating it somewhat) around Loch Muick which is near Ballater and Her Maj’s Estate for those of you further afield. It started off as a beautiful Spring Day:

And was very pleasant. As you can see it’s a huge dark loch, contained within a steep sided glen. Our side was often in shadow on the way out, but the sun falling across the loch made for some good photo ops. The boys were as ever up for a good hike:

We don’t tend to take any chances, no matter the time of year, and although our rucksacks stuffed full of wet weather gear got the odd funny look, by the time we’d reached the top of the 2nd mountain on the left in the top photo (the one in sun) we were glad we had. The clouds raced over Lochnagar, the temperature plummeted and the wind began to howl. It was a tad breezy on top:

It was pretty freezing, and a mixture of rain and snow began to fall. It was a relief to turn and begin the long decent down the side of the hill, but even that wasn’t easy as a slip of old snow covered about 20 feet of path on a steep angle. We edged across on all fours, with the prospect of a 300 yard slide down the mountain focussing the mind wonderfully and returned to the valley floor, where again our gear attracted sneers from those in trainers and carrying umbrellas (using an umbrella up top would have resulted in me taking off and landing in Norway).

We finished off the thick end of 10 miles and 7 hours with a walk in soft Spring sunshine as seen below, feeling privileged to live in Scotland, but also reminded not to take it’s countryside lightly…..