The Cairngorms
Well Wednesday was a pretty lazy day. Neither of us slept well, which is entirely Claire's fault as she woke me up in the dead of night insisting that there was someone outside shining a torch, who'd just keyed the van. In my state of being half asleep I took her at her word and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, and too scared to go outside and check. The following morning when George was found to be undamaged and the tree branches were brushing his roof making squeaky noises I stuck some duct tape over the flashing light on the carbon monoxide detector and Claire promised not to be so paranoid or melodramatic in future. Especially at night time.
We had a mooch round Aviemore on Wednesday morning, got some food supplies, and then returned to Loch Morlich for lunch with a view to going for a run or at least a walk round the lake afterwards. What actually happened was that we spent the entire afternoon lazing round reading books. We spent the night getting clean and doing laundry at the campsite at Dalraddy.
Thursday morning we were up fairly early as the forecast was for good weather. I'd decided that the only nearby Munro that we could easily climb in a day (apart from the ones we've done before) was Bynack More (still a 14 mile round trip). We set off on foot at about 10.30am from near Glenmore Lodge.
The walk was pretty flat for the first few miles, through some nice woodland and past a little turquoise loch which made a change from the frequent rocky, barren slopes.
After a while we came out of the forest onto the moorland and started a fairly gradual ascent. The last mile up to the summit was steep and the paths were rougher. I was having one of those days where everything was difficult and I kept tripping up, but we were soon on the top. We had a chilly lunch as it was quite windy, and then headed off back down as I was cold.
I was a bit apprehensive going down, because although there was nothing in the least bit difficult about it, whilst having my sandwich I'd discovered that the sole was peeling off one of my boots, and was I paranoid about it coming off altogether and causing me to slide the rest of the way down on a grip-less boot.
But we made it down without any disasters, stopped for a final coffee and cake at the turquoise loch, and then headed back to the van. The last few miles from the loch seemed a long way, even though they were mainly flat and on good paths, so we decided to take a short cut past Glenmore lodge to get us back to George a bit quicker.
We probably would have been a bit quicker were it not for the two frisky red squirrels we spotted just before the lodge. They were bouncing around in the trees, running up and down the trunks right in front of us, and being frisky in more carnal ways than we first thought. Quite how they were managing not to fall out of the trees I don't know. We managed to get some photos (not x-rated ones) and eventually continued onwards when the two squirrels disappeared into the trees, presumably for some privacy.
We had a much better sleep on Thursday night, despite being woken by some noisy owls screeching and hooting outside. After the usual morning routine, first job on Friday was to deal with the boot situation. Plan A was to buy some new boots if I could find some suitable ones in Aviemore, preferably in the sale. Plan B was to get some special glue and repair mine. Plan C was to drive to Inverness where there are cobblers and more outdoor shops.
Surprisingly, the first pair of boots I tried on were comfy and suitable. Not in the sale unfortunately, but the man in the shop knocked me 10% off because he felt sorry for me. So we were left with a lot more of the day than we were expecting. We decided to head over to Loch Garten to the RSPB Osprey centre, where we'd previously seen nesting Ospreys, plus loads of small "garden" type birds on the feeders, which we actually preferred to the Ospreys.
When we arrived, the place was closed until spring as the Ospreys had migrated to Africa as they were too cold. So we left George in the car park and went for a stroll round the woods to test out my new boots and get some fresh air. The woods were lovely, with birds flitting around all over the place. We saw a flock of long tailed tits and a very cute mousey vole thing which we were able to get really close to and get some photos. It didn't even seem bothered as it just carried on preening itself as if we weren't there. I was amazed it hadn't been eaten by an otter or an owl or something like that as it really wasn't taking its personal safety very seriously.
We headed back to the van for lunch, whereupon Claire started getting quite agitated as there were lots of birds in the opposite corner of the car park, and no room for us to park George nearby. We nearly got a spot but then someone else in a big motor home swooped in and then promptly left their van and went for a walk. Claire was fuming and I had to talk her out of asking the people to swap places. Eventually we managed to get into prime position, and no sooner had we done so, a crested tit started eating peanuts out of a bird feeder right in front of us! Crested tits are quite rare - according to the sign in the woods there are only 2,500 of them in Britain compared to 2,000,000 blue tits! The trees and feeder were teeming with all sorts of birds - coal, blue, great and crested tits, chaffinches, tree creepers and a lesser spotted woodpecker.
We spent a good couple of hours watching and photographing the birds, during which time I remembered we'd got a healthy nut mix in the van which we'd abandoned in favour of a bacon buttie after a triathlon. So Claire stuck her hand out of the window with some nuts on it and before long a cheeky little coal tit landed on her hand and started snacking. We soon had them eating off the wing mirrors and even off the window sill as well.
I tried to coax them into landing on my head and shoulders outside but they weren't quite that brave, and while Claire was waiting hopefully with the camera, the cheeky coal tit sneaked into George, no doubt in search of the packet of healthy nuts. Of course, as soon as he was inside the van he panicked and started flying into the windscreen. Claire managed to scoop him up in her hands and release him back outside. We'll have to be more careful in future.
After our birdwatching session we nipped over to the nearest town - Grantown on Spey - to get a mobile signal for some essential comms, and to stock up on nuts. Unfortunately I hadn't written this blog then so couldn't post it. We've managed to park up overnight in the same prime position for birdwatching, and are hoping to be woken by a dawn chorus demanding breakfast.
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