Tap o' Noth

Six of us turned up yesterday for just our 3rd walk this year - appropriately after 4 months of lockdown, it was the shortest in overall distance but it involved the most climbing:

Stewart, Ken, Nigel, Jeb, Dave and I - plus Ruby - drove separately over to Rhynie and squeezed in to the small car park at the official start of the walk up to the ancient hill-fort. In a taste of what was to come for me, there were flies everywhere.

The official walk is a straight up and down one of about 3 miles, but we chose to take a circular route, approaching the top from the east of the hill, which increased the distance by about one third. We turned off route slightly too early and had to wade through classic tic territory before we found our way back to the path we had intended to travel.

As we rose higher, I fully expected the flies to disappear but they stuck closely to me all the way to the top, whilst nobody else seemed to be bothered by them.

The final climb was relatively steep, although thankfully not too long and we rested inside the hill fort, which was crater like in shape. This gave me the opportunity to put on some anti-pest cream which seemed to do the trick as far as the flies were concerned, but Nigel pointed to some bleeding on my leg which turned out to be a big fat tic - the second one I had picked up in the last 2 days. The beasties obviously like me.

After refreshing ourselves, we took a team photo then walked round the wall of the ancient fort:

On our pleasant stroll back down the hill, Ken heard what he described as the distinctive sound of a yellowhammer and, sure enough, there it was - about 20 yards away. Unfortunately, my attempts at zooming in on it failed, but it was a new first for most of us.

We briefly looked for a coffee stop in Rhynie, to no avail, so option 2 kicked in and 5 of us (excluding Stewart) drove back to Aboyne for a fine pint of cask Bitter & Twisted outside the Boat Inn.

It was good to be back.