Lochnagar

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/

We didn't have the best of days for our last training walk prior to the main event in just over 2 weeks' time, and, in the end, only 3 of us made it along for the planned march up Lochnagar. Ian drove and it was full gear on when we arrived at the car park at Loch Muick, where the team photo was taken:

It was showery, cool and windy and Ken thought it would be very exposed going up the main path towards Lochnagar, so we headed towards the loch, turned right this time, across the bridge towards the old boathouse, and then along the north side of the loch - the opposite way to the walk we did round Loch Muick a couple of months ago. CK would never have coped - he has to go round the loch clockwise!

We eventually got to the woods where the alternative return route down from the mountain meets the loch (see map on blog) and headed up there. It's very pretty, but hellish steep straight up the gorge. Here's the view down towards the loch as we were ascending:

There's a nice little waterfall near the top of this particular gorge, so Ken and Ian happily posed in front of it, whilst I used the time to take the photograph as additional rest time prior to the next ascent:

We eventually came to a decision point - either take the route up towards the mountain or head across the tops of the hills back to meet the main route up towards Lochnagar. We pondered for a while and waited to see if the cloud cover was going to clear to allow us to progress upwards, but it didn't look likely - and besides which, Ken and Ian could see that I had struggled to get this far and took pity on me, so off we marched heading roughly north east, parallel to the loch to eventually meet up with the main path and head back down.

We started walking just before 9:15 am and it was after 2pm when we got back to the car park. I managed to get a signal to start the App I've got on my Blackberry (http://bimactive.com/) about 35 minutes after we started walking and printed out the stats today from their web site:

(Hard to read in the e-mailed version, but easier if viewed directly from the blog, where you can click on the photo and expand it).

Despite our failure to make it to the top, it was still a good 10 mile workout across sometimes boggy terrain with changeable weather conditions and with some elevation - a good test for our gear and our bodies.

We went back to Banchory golf club for some refreshing ale and watched the golf from Gleneagles.