Seven Bridges walk

What is it about Upper Deeside? Every time we jump on the bus to Ballater, Balmoral or Braemar for one of our walks we seem to be blessed with glorious weather - and yesterday was no different. After a few days of freezing weather, the temperature suddenly took an upward surge and the skies remained blue for our Seven Bridges walk.

Polhollick Bridge had just reopened last month, 3 years after the devastating floods that struck the area, thus opening up this popular walking route again and we decided that now was the time to tick this one off our list.

Six of us caught the 201 bus leaving Banchory just before 1 pm - Ian, Colin, Nigel, Steve, Jeb and I - and nobody had to shell out any cash this time. Promises of drams to celebrate Nigel's big birthday the day before may have encouraged a couple to come out of hibernation - Jeb, in particular, had, up until then, been on a Dry January, and Nigel himself was just getting back in to the swing of things after a couple of weeks of self-imposed abstinence.

On arrival in Ballater, Jeb headed straight for the Co-op for a bite to eat while the rest of us paid a quick visit to the bike shop for Nigel and I to check out their current stock of e-bikes.

All of the walking web sites suggest starting the Seven Bridges walk at the station, heading west along the roads to join the old railway line that was never used, but prior experience had taught us that it was far nicer to take the route beside the river and round the golf course, although we did as a consequence encounter a slight technical problem - the path beside the river was extremely icy, making the first part of the walk a pretty slow process. The upside, however, was having a close-up view of the the Dee and the ice floes sailing down:

Steve made a short video - https://youtu.be/fF0_haz9Twg

The Dee was looking a bit more benign here:

Eventually, we met up with the old railway line and the "official" part of the walk. Further along, we started counting the bridges - this was numbers 1 and 2:

The next bridge - number 3 - was obviously a victim of the storm but it was only a short hop over a narrow burn for us anyway:

The newly repaired Polhollick bridge soon came in to view and I attempted to take a team photo with the bridge in the background:

That was obviously an abject failure, but here's the bridge in all its glory:

We stopped here to let Nigel treat us to a birthday dram, although it was a little confusing when he produced the bottle:

Ian took a selfie here:

Then I tried again with another team photo:

The walk back on the other side of the river was initially through wide forest tracks before we came to the South Deeside road - decision point. Should we turn right and take the recommended short leg detour up to see the ruins of Knock Castle, or turn left back to Ballater? There was no doubt in Jeb's mind - Nigel's dram had given him his first taste of alcohol for the best part of a month and he was keen to get more - as soon as possible! - so left it was.

Back in Ballater, we knew the Alexandra was closed for holidays so our first port of call was to the Barrel Bar at the Glenaden Hotel, where we were a little unlucky as one of the beers had just run out - all that was left was Weizen from Windswept - and lovely it was too, but at a potentially lethal 5.2%, we decided we couldn't risk a session of this, so, after CK had checked out availability, we headed to the Deeside Inn for pints of Ossian. The initial plan was to have one there then stroll over to the Balmoral Bar for Deuchar's before getting the bus back to Banchory, but we soon got settled at a nice table in the Deeside Inn and the beer was excellent, so we decided to stay there for what turned out to be a post walk 4-pinter. It was all a bit much for the new sexagenarian:

The 6:20 pm bus got us back to Banchory (via Torphins) in good time and we all headed home for something to eat and settle down to watch the Arsenal - Man U cup match.

Another great Friday afternoon/early evening. Here's the stats: