Banchory Veterans' Hill-walkers

Another Friday afternoon, another trip down to Ballater for a hill-walk. This time, Dave had 2 of his former squash partners from Reading - Harry and Matt - up to visit him and they joined John, Colin and I to do the Sgor Buidhe circuit. It transpired that this walk was almost identical to the Creagan Riabhach walk we had done 4 weeks' previously - at least until we reached the start of the descent of the previous walk. The only difference was that our descent was on the west side of the woods this time, rather than the east - and this brought us out a bit further along the Pass of Ballater. We also managed to find a much easier way down the slope to the old railway line, so, all in all, a slightly better route. the only problem we had was that the battery ran out on my phone so the Strava stats were not quite complete as you'll see from this extract: When I got home and recharged the battery, Strava woke up again, but, interestingly the distance stats stopped when the b...

We were but 3 for the first Friday afternoon walk of June - Nigel, John and I. We delayed our start a little to let the forecast morning rain pass, but met up at Clatterin' Brig at 12:30, leaving one car there before driving back over the Cairn to start our walk at Bridge of Dye. It was a fine afternoon and the initial part of the walk up to Char Bothy - which we'd done 2 years ago - was fine and easy. We stopped there for a few photos: From there, we took a sharp left turn over the bridge and continued on the good quality track for a bit, stopping occasionally to take in the views: All good things come to an end and soon we reached the fork where we had to turn left and head up and over the hills, along a distinct trail, albeit of much poorer quality than we had got used to up to this point: We came across a pool of water, swarming with tadpoles: John was our navigator and frequently referred to the OS maps he was carrying, ...