Sloth & Gluttony

Monday 21st to Wednesday 23rd September 2015

Scotland - Days 5 - 7

Sorry about the lack of blogs for the last few days. The reason being that we have been exceptionally lazy and haven't really done anything apart from eat, drink and be lazy.

After mooching round Ullapool on Monday morning, we drove back down to the Cairngorms because the weather forecast was much better there. We then had a mooch round Aviemore before parking up at a favourite overnight spot from our last trip, next to Loch Morlich. The only achievements for the day were purchasing a nice red fleece non itchy hat, a metal hip flask with a Scottish thistle emblem on it and a very expensive miniature bottle of Scottish gin. We didn't feel too bad about our laziness given how busy we'd been at the start of our trip.

Tuesday morning was pretty ropey, with rain and low cloud. Things settled down a bit towards lunchtime so we parked up a Inverdruie and went for a bit of a stroll through the woods and past some lochs. We went past a shack in the woods that we'd seen last time we were here and thought then that it looked like a serial killer's cottage. This year there was a man wearing a forensic suit, shoe covers and latex gloves standing outside. He was leaning on a dynarod van and smiling, but that could have just been a cover.

When we got back to Inverdruie we nipped into the visitor centre to use the toilet. There was a nice shop there so we had a browse round, and came out about half an hour later having spent over £80 on Scottish cheese, crackers, whiskey and more gin, but in a bigger, more cost effective bottle. Prior to this trip we didn't know that Scotland produced much gin (although now I think about it, Gordon's is a rather Scottish sounding name). This gin is called The Botanist, and is made on the Isle of Islay. Claire is raving about it although I'm not too keen and will stick to the Scotch which I am getting quite a taste for.

We decided to drive round to the eastern side of the Cairngorms plateau, as we hadn't been there before, and we thought the weather might be a bit better round there. It took us quite a while to drive there, and by the time we'd settled on an overnight spot it was about 7pm. We had dinner and then opened the spirits and the rest is a blur.

It's not really. We only had a nightcap and then went to bed.

In the morning a camera crew turned up in our layby and started filming the local landowner talking about something (hopefully not those pesky campervanners who keep stopping in his layby overnight). We couldn't hear what it was, but think that George may have been in the background!
We eventually set off with the intention of having a look round Braemar village and then going for a walk up Morrone which is the hill overlooking the village.

Claire bought herself a hip flask and we stocked up on supplies in the Co-Op, and I bought myself a very nice and shiny long handled spoon which is ideal for eating rehydrated camping food straight out of the bag without getting your hand sticky. Perfect for our next bivvy trip when we probably won't be lucky enough to have any food heroes to bring home made chilli along.

After lunch in the van I was exhausted and had a power nap. When I woke up the weather couldn't make up its mind whether to be rainy or sunny, so we checked into the local campsite and had some very nice showers. Much better that the Ullapool campsite showers. It was a bit late to go up the hill after that, so we walked to the pub and had a couple of beers and a big dinner instead. Claire is now suffering from indigestion.

We are determined to get up Morrone tomorrow, rain or shine or both, and then hopefully to do something more ambitious on Friday, when the weather is forecast to improve.

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