Banchory Veterans' Hill-walkers

What can we say? We organise these walks weeks in advance but seem to strike lucky each time - especially when we head up Deeside. Friday was no exception - yet another glorious day for our trip up to Ballater and our walk round Craig of Prony. Seven of us caught the bus out from various locations - including Stewart, who must have been a good boy recently as his wife dropped him off in Banchory and picked him up later. Ken had hoped to be able to catch up with us on the walk but we weren't sure how and where exactly. We took the bus out to Bridge of Gairn and walked back a little along the Pass of Ballater before starting the walk proper up a farm track leading to a new house that we last spotted 2 years ago when we completed the two adjacent walks up Creagan Riabhach and Sgor Buidhe. It was at the construction phase then, but looked complete now with shrubbery all planted. It was a beautiful sunny day but you wouldn't have called it hot. Nonetheless, the presumed occupant...

Another well attended walk on yet another beautiful Deeside day yesterday included the first appearance for a while of Gary Grant (albeit only for the latter part of the walk from Burn o' Vat back to Aboyne). It was also our leader, Ken's first outing of the year, and he, being the only non-bus pass holder on yesterday's walk, arranged for Bev to drop him off at our start point at the Cambus o' May trails. The rest of us - Ian, Colin, Jeb, Nigel and I - all caught the 201 from Banchory. Whenever Jeb joins our walks, it's becoming traditional that he has to find a sandwich shop before he starts the walk. He was in luck yesterday as there was somewhere to oblige him adjacent to our start point - albeit it seemed to take them a while to make up his sandwich. We decided on a mini team photo to pass the time whilst the rest of us waited: It's still winter - although you would never have known it yesterday - so the plan was to avoid the higher slopes in case o...

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 se...

Great turnout for the first walk of 2019 - 8 of us showed up at Brimmond Hill car park at 1 pm for what was scheduled to be a 9 kms hike. The area is well known to Gordon and Stewart, who regularly take the dogs up Brimmond Hill, but they were not familiar with the first half of this particular walk ( https://my.viewranger.com/route/details/MjA2Mzk5Nw==?ref=57.181850989705694|-2.233402000000069|18 ). The instructions seemed clear enough - there were 30 separate waypoints taking up 17 pages of printing on A4 paper, but, after a while, all the key directions in the photos began to look the same. Stewart and Gordon knew roughly where to head and Craibstone golf course was always in view so we were never going to get lost, but finding the exact turning points proved too tricky for me. It transpired in the end that we omitted the loop that should have taken us to the Tyrebagger car park (about waypoint 17) and instead Gordon led us straight back up Elrick Hill, where we stopped at the t...

The dire forecasts of damaging winds and rain came to nought yesterday. In the end, just four of us made the trip over the hill to Fettercairn for a short, flat afternoon walk - Dave drove Nigel, John and I, parking up next to the Mercat Cross in the village, which cut a little off the planned route. We walked westwards past the school and the distillery and then took a right along a minor road which led us to a sign saying "Stankeye - West Lodge", which was our entrance to the Fasque estate. Who knew there was a small loch there, or that it was called Stankeye? Not us. Traversing the loch anti-clockwise (just as well Colin wasn't with us!) on a barely discernible trail, we eventually met up with an estate road again which took us to the impressive Fasque House, in front of which there must have been 20-30 deer of differing types, plus a few random llamas: Setting the camera up on the sun dial, we took the team photo in front of Fasque House: The house is no...

Jeb was a late addition to our Friday afternoon jaunt in to Aberdeen, making us 8 in all - equal best (with Carn Ferg) attendance this year for one of our monthly walks. Ian had a plan for us to bus in to the Bieldside/Milltimber area and walk up from there through Countesswells woods and Hazlehead park, and he had recce'd it the day before on one of the Freewheelers' Thursday cycle runs. It transpired however that the planned route was also one that Jeb cycled regularly on his way to/from work, so with two leaders with experience of the route, there was little chance of us getting lost. The start of the walk was up Hillhead Road, leading us through the very smart Hillhead Farm. Smart is not a term often associated with farms, but this one was special - a huge investment is being made here. The roads have all been newly tarred and fresh dry stane dykes have been built all the way up, lined by newly turfed neat grass verges. There are modern buildings and work still taking p...