Hills: Carn a’Mhaim
Munros: ditto
Who: me and Stuart (no minions this time)
When: Sunday 2 August 2015
Distance: 14 miles
Time: 7 hours
Weather: started out lovely then a bit iffy. Definitely not as forecast.
Also present: The usual billions of Cairngorm midges: a less than pleasant stream crossing
Bog factor: low
Post walk drink: Shiraz (me) Stella Artois (Stuart)
It was 2 August 2015. We had come up to Scotland for a friend’s wedding on the 31st July, and had seen that the weather forecast for the weekend looked reasonable if you happened to be over in the East – indeed as far East as possible. Having done all the hills in the Angus/ Lochnagar area and most of those around Glenshee already, a plan was hatched to make a smash and grab raid into the Cairngorms.
Wait, hang on a minute – where are the usual tales of transportation foul-ups, gear left in London, gear lost, mechanical breakdowns and too many glasses of wine that tend to characterise one of our trips North? Well, for the most part they were absent – things actually went more or less to plan! Yes, there were some beers/ glasses of wine ingested over the weekend, but that was the day before and the day of the wedding (pretty reasonable, really). And inevitably there was something forgotten as I had left our summer weight gloves in London, necessitating a quick stop in Tiso in Perth to pick up replacements. As it happened we may have been just as well taking the winter pairs as for August it was Baltic – summer my a**e as Jim Royle might have said! Continue reading
Mountains and Malbec 