Invercauld - Balmoral

On a beautiful October Friday afternoon, Ken, Jeb and I headed up Deeside again. The plan was for Jeb to catch the bus at Culter, me at Banchory and Ken at Crathie. Jeb's plan was altered slightly as he was hoping to take his bike with him on the bus and drop it off at the Banchory Bike Shop, but the bus driver said he couldn't take his bike, so, in the end, Jeb had to cycle to Banchory, drop his bike off and catch the 1 pm bus. This apart, the outward travel plans worked perfectly. On alighting the bus we took the narrow path down to the river where we got our first sight of the old Invercauld bridge:

Looking east up the Dee:

We crossed the old bridge and set out on the route Ken had planned for us south of the Dee:

The first part of the walk climbs slowly upwards on good forestry track and we got some lovely views, including a fine waterfall:

Our initial thoughts that the whole route might be cyclable were soon quashed as the path narrowed and briefly got muddier. Soon we came out of the wooded area and out in to open moorland with a sneak peek of Lochnagar just coming in to view over the hills:

There were plenty of burn crossings and more bridges than the famed Ballater Seven Bridges walk:

Further on, we got a full view of a slightly frosted Lochnagar:

It had clouded over a bit but as we began the long descent towards the Balmoral Cairns, shafts of sunlight appeared:

We passed some of the Balmoral estate houses and the golf course, then took a surprise (to me) right turn along the road for my first ever crossing of this fine old bridge:

As we approached the car park at Crathie, the kirk came in to view:

With the earlier team photo having failed, this was just to prove that I was actually on the walk. The route and stats were:

Ken then drove us to Ballater and we popped in to the Alexandra for a couple of swift pints (for Jeb and me) while Ken supped a solitary one before driving us back to Banchory for fish suppers (for Ken and Jeb). A fine day out - and one we'd be happy to do again. In fact, Jeb speculated whether we could do it in reverse and walk all the way to Braemar, which would add another 5 kms approx. Needs further research - we wouldn't want to walk along the road.