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 -