Creagan Riabhach

What a great day out! Plan B had to come in to operation yesterday as the orginal idea to walk up Glen Dye was thwarted by the closure of the Cairn o' Mount road.

After multiple emails were exchanged before the event, five of us finally settled on travelling down to Ballater by bus on what promised to be another hot day. We alighted at the start of the Pass of Ballater and walked to the "car park" for the official start of the published walk, which was mostly on good quality Land Rover track.

We were grateful for the shade provided by the trees on the initial climb up:

We were already looking forward to the 4 pubs we planned to slake our thirst in after the walk

The route instructions were very detailed and we had no misadventures this time - unlike our last adventure up Mortlich. There was a brief disagreement when it came to the one option on the route to take the short walk up to the aerial tower, from where we were told there were good views of the Dee Valley. "I'm not interested in good views" came out of the mouth of one of our group, to which the riposte was "then why are we ******* hill-walking at all?" I guess we were a bit hot and bothered at that point. Anyway, we did do this additional leg and there were indeed some good views from there:

Further on up the hill, the trees thinned out, creating superb panoramic views of the valley, with Mount Keen and Lochnagar most prominent:

Eventually we came to the sharp left turn which signalled the start of the descent. We decided it was time to stop for lunch:

The temperature at this altitude was probably only low 20's and there was a light wind, which helped to keep us cool. It got steadily warmer as we descended down past Balmenach Farm and the ruins of Abergairn Castle (which we never saw). Soon we were back down at the Pass of Ballater, turning right this time to walk past the Craigendarroch resort and on to the main A93 road.

Opposite the entrance to the Hilton resort, we turned off the road and slithered down a steep narrow path down to the old railway line - we didn't know there was one past Ballater, but you learn every day. We walked along the trail a bit back towards the town and then went off piste and headed further down to the riverside walk, stopping at a nice little beach:

Who left their fingers on the lens?

We carried on along the riverside walkway and right round the golf course, by which time we were more than ready for our first beer - which we had sitting outside the Alexandra:

The first one barely touched the sides so we quickly had a second one before moving round to the Deeside Inn for a quick one, then on to the Barrel bar at the Glenaden. By now we were getting pretty hungry so we decided to go for a curry at India on the Green, thus passing up the chance to visit the Balmoral Bar which would have been the promised 4th stop.

The curry was good, although we had to hurry them along a bit at the end so that we could make the 19:55 bus back to Banchory:

For the record, our actual walking time was exactly 3 hours, although the elapsed time was a bit more than that. The distance was 13 kms with 392 m of lelevation. Here's the route map etc:

Mortlich

After much debate, the planned Aberdeen trip was postponed and we opted to take on a Deeside hill instead. There were 5 of us - Dave, who had just stepped off an overnight flight from South Africa, Nigel, Colin, John and myself.

John had dug out his old 25 Deeside Walks book and had suggested Mortlich. An alternative of Potarch to Aboyne via Falls of Dess was also briefly mooted, but equally quickly dismissed - especially once Nigel had bought a return bus ticket to Aboyne!

Dave joined us on the bus at Potarch and soon we were in Aboyne and on the walk by 1.20 pm. We started by walking back up the Deeside Way in a north-easterly direction until we met the turn-off point near Aboyne Loch golf course. So far, so good.

Once we started having options - forks and junctions on the track - that's when things started to go a bit pear-shaped. This was the first decision point - 

Indecision reigns - Dave consults his OS map -

Eventually, the others followed me up the track -

John's book recommended we take a slight detour and head up Little Hill, which we were told had better views of Aboyne and the loch than Mortlich did - and they were right -

We came down from Little Hill and that's when the real trouble started. We couldn't figure out the way to go from the directions in the book, which was pretty old and there had been a few changes since then. We tried to wing it and follow our noses but most of the paths were very narrow and overgrown with gorse/broom/whins and bracken. In fact, in just a few weeks you won't be able to see most of the tracks once things have started to grow.

We decided this couldn't be the right route and retraced our steps before John eventually swallowed our collective pride and knocked on the door of a remote farmhouse to ask for directions. That worked a treat and soon we were on the correct path which took a steep turn straight up the hill -

This quality trail only took us so far up before it narrowed dramatically and we were fighting our way through the undergrowth again. Machetes would have been useful. Getting to one of the kissing gates, it was time for a team photo -

The trail from there was sharply upwards and Nigel was beginning to struggle - eventually he decided to rest and just wait for the rest of us to come back down, so on we went. There were several "photo opportunities" -

When the four of us got to the cairn at the top, we spotted this memorial stone -

Clambering on to the cairn was a little precarious as a number of the rocks were pretty shaky, but we managed to get a few photos - although there was no real view of the valley below -

Dave's OS map proved useful and helped us get back safely to Aboyne via the golf course. Dave was ready for a beer, but we had a dilemma - it was half an hour until the next bus and the one after that wasn't until an hour later. There wasn't enough time to walk to the Boat Inn and back to catch the first bus, and the second bus would get us home too late, so 4 of us sat at the bus stop and waited whilst Dave walked on to the Boat Inn alone, from where he was going to summons Jayne's Taxi to take him home.

Here's the route map and the stats - although this doesn't show all the to-ing and fro-ing -