Craigendarroch & River Walk - Friday 18th March, 2022

For once, the Deeside bus service let us down. We had planned to catch the usual 1 pm bus out to Ballater but it never arrived - the bus had broken down at Crathes. Nigel, Colin and Andy were waiting outside the Douglas so the solution for them was simple - pop in to the Coffee Bothy. It was easy for me too just to cross the road to Arbor Court and grab a cup of tea while we all waited for the next bus. Ken was waiting at Potarch and opted not to go to the cafe there but instead go for a short river walk.

The next bus was on time but because we had lost an hour Ken's planned walk had to be shelved until another day, so we opted for the short climb up and round Craigendarroch, looping back along the river and round the golf course.

On the way up, we noted that somebody had found a creative way of getting past fallen trees:

When we got to the top and posed for the team photo, I'm afraid my camera's auto-focus let me down - but not before I managed this shot:

I also managed to get a shot of distant snow-covered Lochnagar:

I fear, however, that my camera is destined to go to the great camera graveyard soon. 

When we were walking round the golf course, we spotted some coos taking a dip:

We did have a nice time with beers afterwards in the Alexandra and Glenaden's Barrel bar and we caught the bus home in good time for Andy to watch Wolves losing - again - so all was far from lost. We never seem to fail to enjoy our trips up Deeside to Ballater and Braemar. For the record, the stats were: