Thursday 1 April – This time we flew to Edinburgh. The details of the journey are not important, but we took a daytime flight via Heathrow and had a night at a decent hotel called Avora.
Friday 2 April – We took a morning flight to EDI. Bob M and Carol were also on the plane. We picked up the car at the airport and headed to Leith where we had booked a night at the Premier Inn. Leith was once an industrial area with a “mixed” reputation, but recently-built blocks of flats were obviously very acceptable places to live.
That evening we had an excellent Italian meal at “Prezzo” in a renovated fish warehouse.
Saturday 3 April – Off to Glenshee, but first we did our quota of shopping at a local Morrison’s supermarket.
It’s not a long drive from Edinburgh to Glenshee so we took our time and stopped took take pictures of the Forth Bridges. Construction of the new road bridge had not started in 2010.
At 3:00 pm-ish, we arrived at Glenshee and offloaded our shopping at the main house, Dalnaglar Castle. Very impressive, but we were assigned to a cottage up the road called Corrydon.
Our accommodation was not so grand as the castle. A bit chilly and basic to be honest, but it was clean and once the storage heaters were going the place warmed up, but the bathroom was always cold and visits to the toilet in the middle of the night invariably required a walk down stairs and across the kitchen. We were better off than some others. They were in a house nicknamed “the hovel”.
Dalnagalar Castle was a very different story. Some people even had en suite bathrooms, an unheard of luxury on Easter Scotland trips.
Sunday 4 April. Glenshee has a ski area and several Munros are nearby. Three of them are readily accessible from the lodge and of course we had to bag them. They can be climbed on an 8-mile hike with a modest 600 metres of ascent. There are ski trails close the the path, but soon the routes diverge. These hills are known as the Cairnwell Munros. A perfect opportunity for some newcomers to Munro bagging to get their first summit.
It was cold, but clear. A good day for the hills.
Monday 5 April – A grey day and a good time for visiting big houses. So we set off to Balmoral Castle. Bob and Jesper joined us. Jesper invited Matthew Hamer. Poor Matthew thought that a castle would have moat, ramparts, etc. He was not expecting a big country house.
We took the tour, but before it started we had time to get lunch and take a walk next to the river and visit the gardens.
Tuesday 6 April – Glen Lyon. We had arranged to meet my second cousin, John Foster and his wife, Marj. It was a wet and miserable day. Bob I joined us. Our rendezvous was at Bruar, which is a shopping area north of Pitlochry. Perfect for spending money on everything from grockel bait to expensive clothes, but there is a decent restaurant and it’s a good place to meet over a cup of tea and make plans for the rest of the day. John suggested an outing to the Crannog Centre at Loch Tay. The route to there passed the location of our 2004 trip – Grandtully. There have been some changes. It looked as though the building had been converted to shops.
The Crannog Centre tour included a talk and some demonstrations. It’s a very good place to visit. Now we know that many, if not most, of the little groups of trees that can be seen on what appear to be small islands in Scottish lochs are actually the remains of round conical structures built offshore for defensive reasons about 2600 years ago. Archeologists have learned a lot from excavations.
In the way back we stopped at the Dewar’s distillery in Aberfeldy for the tour. Always good, even if you have had many distillery tours before.
Wednesday 7 April – Loch Garten. This time, Betsy, Bob I and I were joined by Dave Lydiatt for a drive around the Cairngorms with our target being the bird sanctuary at Loch Garten. It was famous in the past because after many years absence from the UK, ospreys nested there. We drove towards Balmoral and then northwards past the ski area at Tomintoul.
There are some splendid views back to Lochnagar
Betsy recorded seeing several birds along the way, which actually took us past 2 ski areas. Birds seen near Tomintoul were oyster catchers, maybe a buzzard, lapwings in flight, greylag geese, osprey, chaffinch, siskins, coal tit, great tit, great spotted woodpecker.
We returned home along the A9 via Pitlochry.
Back at the Castle, we were greeted by the very excited pair of Rosemary and Carol. They had been walking on the Balmoral estate while a group had gone to climb Lochnagar. They noticed a large green Range Rover parked below and a well dressed gentleman was assisting an older women. They decided to climb up and see if they could help by carrying a rucksack or something. Carol reached them first an exclaimed “it’s you!”. the woman was Camilla Parker Bowles i. e. Prince Charles’s wife. She had damaged her ankle in a rabbit hole and could not walk. Rosemary suggested sliding down the hill on her bottom. Camilla was grateful to Carol promising not to tell the Daily Mail about this. Carol and Rosemary also promised not to take photographs. The gentleman was her equerry and was trying to get help. Later we heard that her ankle was broken.
Thursday 8 April – We hoped to climb up to 3 Munros with Dave W, Dave and Heather and Christine. From the Dalmunzie Castle Hotel we followed the route of an old narrow gauge railway that had been constructed so that hotel guests, shooting parties in particular, had an easy way of getting to the summit of the first Munro. There were bits and pieces left from the railway in a shed at the hotel. It was built in the 1920s and it’s clear that it was running well into the 1970s. Click here for more information.
Some railway sleepers were still in place. the end of the line was at Glenlochsie Lodge, the ruins are visible along with what’s left of the station platform.
This was a straightforward ascent to Glas Tulaichean on a stalkers track, which was maintained for Land Rover use. On the way, the wind picked up and we had to lean into it; one step sideways, one step up. There was snow on the final slope. Everything was rattling, nobody could hear anything so after getting to the trig point, we found a sheltered spot on the east for lunch (with sun!) and decided to retreat. without tackling the other two summits.
Our descent took us off the path and involved some “interesting” river crossings: 2 jumps, 3 wadings. We all had tea at Corrydon afterwards. Then all were off to the Castle. While there, Camilla’s equerry showed up in his green Land Rover with champagne and chocolates from Highgrove House for Carol and Rosemary – a lot of excitement for them.
Friday 9 April – Glen Clova. A party of Bob I, Jesper, Clive, Di, Betsy and I set out to conquer two Munros.
A steady walk through Forestry Commission land along a track up through open moorland to the col between Mayar and Driesh.
Saturday 10 April – Packing, cleaning up, heading south towards EDI for the flight to London and a stay with Alex In Ashford. We had spare time, so when we saw a sign to the RSPB site at Vane Farm we took a detour. This was to the first of many visits to this place on Loch Leven. It became a traditional place for us to have lunch just after arrival to EDI on future trips. There are several hiking trails and we checked out most of them as well as looking at the bird life. There are some good views from the top of the escarpment.
