Muir of Dinnet

We had a lovely, happy evening in the bar at our hotel last night. The food is very good, like really excellent home cooking, and we laughed and chatted until we realised that the clocks were going forward so we would be losing an hour of sleep, at which point we all scuttled off to bed.

This morning we were all up sharp for another gloriously sunny day in Deeside. After the eight of us had breakfast we said our goodbyes and scattered for our various walks. Today I went to the Muir of Dinnet National Nature Reserve, just up the road from where my walk ended yesterday. I parked at the Burn o' Vat visitor centre and set off on a combination of the Little Ord and Loch Kinard Trails, guided by the informative and free leaflet. It came to about 11 km. Loch Kinard and its neighbour Loch Davan are "kettle lochs" formed by two huge lumps of ice stranded here when the glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice Age. The walk was delightful and varied; winding paths through the woods, open grassy paths across gentle hillsides, and of course down by the loch itself with the water sparkling in the sunshine. I saw a small plane towing a glider higher and higher into the sky, and I watched as they separated and the glider moved gently off on its own. I heard a woodpecker in a tree and I stood quietly for a while until I spotted it pecking away. Then it popped into a little hole in the tree trunk. Down by Loch Kinard a gaggle of geese flew low and noisily over the water. Overlooking the Loch, there is a beautiful Celtic cross, carved on a slab of granite. It's 1200 years old - I sat on the bench nearby and pondered on this for a while, but my thoughts kept sliding away to the sunshine and the delicious chocolate bar that I was eating. As I continued circumnavigating the loch, two little brown lizards ran across my path, and I saw some wee frogs too. However due to all my stops to look at things it took longer to walk round the loch than I thought, and I ended up over-heated from hurrying and a full half an hour late for meeting James by the time I arrived back at the car park. James was happy enough though, relaxing in the sunshine after climbing Morven, a nearby Corbett. 

As we set off homewards we passed Abergeldie Castle beside the River Dee, which very nearly fell into the river during the floods of December 2015. I remember the news reports; it was absolutely teetering on the edge of the bank, in fact the floodwaters had eaten away the bank so that the castle was left partly overhanging the river. We could see that now the bank of the river has been all shored up, and the road on the other side repaired. We stopped at the Glenshee Visitor Centre for a welcome coffee; we saw the Volvo in the car park because Ally and Cat were walking nearby, and just as we were leaving we saw them striding down the hill after their five hour walk, comprising three Munros. I have to say that it has been a splendid weekend.