Crathes

With only a handful available for Friday's walk, it was decided to keep it simple and local with a walk out to and round the Crathes estate. There were a few late cancellations for various reasons - Ian, Colin and Dave all had things crop up that they had to deal with - so it was just me, Nigel and debutant Bill who showed up outside the Burnett to begin the walk.

It was a fine afternoon as we strolled along the Deeside Way and up through the West entrance at Crathes, from where we headed along the trails and down to the lodge house at the main road entrance to meet up with Dave, who was on puppy duties.

The four of us - plus Ruby - took the trails round the east side of the estate past the newly drained pond. As we headed up towards the north trail, Ian phoned to tell us he'd got his car tyre fixed and had cycled out to meet us for coffee at the cafe, so that's where we headed.

Ice creams have become a firm favourite for Dave and I recently, but the others stuck to the traditional teas, coffees, scones etc:

Dave and Ruby went back to his car and Ian headed off on his bike, leaving the core of Nigel, Bill and I to walk back home via the west entrance to join up with the Banchory paths.

The stats for our afternoon "stroll" were:

At 15.5 kms, the distance was comfortably above this year's average of 12.6 kms, although obviously the climbing stats of 197 mtrs were down a bit on the average of 250 mtrs.