Banchory Veterans' Hill-walkers

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/ It was such a lovely afternoon on Saturday that Jo and I thought we'd go for a drive and a walk and we knew about the Ballater - Cambus o' May loop north and south of the river, so thought we'd try that for a change. Here's the stats and the route: Nice pint of Trade Winds at the Alexandra at the end too!

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/ Arising on Monday morning, with nobody needing to rush - other than Ian catching a train at 12:30 pm - and feeling a little cheated from the unexpectedly short and low level walk on Sunday, a plan was hastily hatched to do a quick climb up one of the local hills - Catbells. We checked out promptly and headed for the hills. It was a fairly sharp upward climb with, as usual, a few false peaks. Here's some of the photos we took: Finally the stats and the route on our short spurt up the hill: That's it for this year - probably my last. Good fun.

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/ Sunday was as dire as had been feared. Rain and low clouds gave poor visibility, with roads flooding leading us to hastily re-draw the walking plans. At some stage, Dave and I had to get our cars from where we'd left them in Patterdale on Thursday night over to Keswick, where we were staying on Sunday night. The weather gave us the opportunity to do this first thing on Sunday, so Dave and I hopped in a taxi for the half hour ride over the Kirkstone Pass, via the windy road known as The Struggle. We got back to Grasmere an hour or so later and picked the others up and headed for Grange, where we dumped Dave's car, all jumped in mine, then drove up to Seatoller to start our short, low-level walk in the rain, with the intention of stopping off to take in a bit of the Borrowdale Show - if it was on. The fields were quagmires and the river was rapidly filling to the point of overflowing but the Show must go on - and it did somehow. Five...

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/ Saturday started even better than had been forecast - blue skies all the way and not a breath of wind. It boded well for the walk, but I decided, in view of my funny turn yesterday, that it was best that I dip out of the day's walk and let the others march on unhindered. I would do my own thing - Ken told me about a low level walk to Ambleside and I agreed to meet up with them there. I sat outside our hotel, reading the papers, and watched as they headed for the hills: After a brief session in the steam room, I set off on my walk - along the riverside towards Dove Cottage (Wordsworth's home): Walking on, I came to a nice, but fairly busy, lakeside beach: There are a number of trails to Ambleside but I veered away from the lowest one and took the next level up initially. Eventually it brought me to a large, apparently naturally formed, cave, with handily placed stepping stones leading to the interior: After this, t...

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/ The story of this year's return visit to the Lake District started on Thursday when we all made our way to the Glenridding Hotel, Patterdale for our first evening's stay. Ian had travelled down early by train that morning and had already put in a 7 mile warm-up walk (allied to boat trip) prior to the rest of us arriving in the evening. After a morning's work in Fraserburgh, I drove back to Banchory to pick up Ken and Colin and drive south. Dave was last to arrive, having driven north from Reading - just 2 days after returning from his USA vacation. A few ales were supped as we anxiously eyed the weather forecast, which, unfortunately, turned out to be pretty accurate for our first walk on Friday - up and over and through the dales to Grasmere. We were past caring, however, when the first team photo of the weekend was taken the night before in the Ramblers: Sure enough - wet and windy it was on Friday. Not constant, but ann...

From http://bvhill-walkers.blogspot.com/ It was a lovely morning on Saturday and, having cancelled my golf, Jo and I decided to take the bus down to Potarch, have a spot of lunch - and a beer of course - then walk back to Banchory along the new Deeside Way paths. It's very civilised and well laid out - a bit of climbing up to the car park at Shooting Greens once you're past Dave's house, but, from there, the Deeside Way seems to peter out a bit. There's plenty of forestry trails back to Banchory of course, but we didn't see anything marked out as the Deeside Way. There's also a bit more of an upwards stretch from Shooting Greens - a little surprisingly up to 900 feet in all. We wandered around a bit on the mostly downhill section, following our noses from Shooting Greens back to Banchory, but we were still a little surprised that it took us well over 3 hours - the distance was almost 14 kms - and we were walking at a reasonable rate considering it wasn...