Crathie - Braemar

What a glorious day we (inadvertently) chose to do the Crathie to Invercauld walk again with the new path from Invercauld to Braemar added on. Good turnout of 8 of us too.

The 201 was on time - and surprisingly full - and we got to Crathie to start our walk, after a brief pee stop, at exactly 11:19 am. A quick selfie here:

We again chose the more easterly pedestrian bridge to cross the Dee and walked up past the Balmoral Cairns and out in to the open where we had fine views of Lochnagar straight ahead, but Ken and Nigel had oviously spotted something else:

After an hour or so along the wide tracks it was time to stop for a quick snack and hydration:

The road then sweeps down to a bridge over a burn and that's where I took a couple of team photos - the 2nd as a selfie:

The wide paths continue for a while - we had to step aside a couple of times to let vehicles to pass - where were they going? When we reached a shelter on the right we turned off the main trail and took a narrow, slightly overgrown path opposite. There's a gradual climb from there - when we got to the top we stopped again to take on more fuel.

The path then widened a little again and Nigel increased the pace with Ruby following:

There was another short climb through relatively dense undergrowth but we were able to stop occasionally to take in the fine views and our surroundings:

The path down was a little tricky - for me at least - at times you couldn't see where your feet were going. We had a few burns to cross - two of them by stepping stones and one over a bridge - and finally it was back on to wide landrover tracks all the way down towards Invercauld bridge.

Once we were all down, the initial plan was to continue from Invercauld on to the newly opened path to Braemar, but Dave (and Ruby) had other ideas and wanted to get home a bit earlier - but Dave wasn't going to miss out on beers, so he decided to catch the bus from Invercauld to Braemar - and my knee was really hurting after the downward section so I decided to join him. Dave and I crossed the old military bridge back to the main road where the bus would shortly be passing:

Meanwhile, the other six decided to crack on along the new path to Braemar. This path turned out to be a lot shorter than I initally thought - less than 3kms compared with the 5 kms I thought it would be. There was, apparently, one fairly steep section in this walk up to the Lion's Face. Jeb caught some nice views too:

Dave and I got to the Invercauld Mews about 3:40 pm and sat outside with a couple of pints of Braemar Brewery's Summer Sun. This was the selection available:

The additional 3 kms that the other six had walked took about 40 minutes and soon we were all back together to enjoy the excellent beer in the warm sunshine:

The decision now was - which bus to catch and who wanted to eat and where? In the end, we all caught the 5:30 bus back with Dave, Ken and I heading straight home whilst the others alighted at Ballater and ate there, catching the later "magic" bus back.

Here's a comparison of the stats - first mine, then Nigel's:

Nigel's map clearly shows why the last bit of the walk was less than expected. It's 5 kms from Invercauld to Braemar by road but the new path cuts the corner.

What a wonderful day.