Being confined to Aberdeen, or within 5 miles of the boundary of Aberdeen due to covid restrictions, has stymied our walks in the countryside quite a bit. But it has forced us to look for hidden gems close to home and Elrick Hill is one such place. I’d never been here before but it was lovely with woodland, moorland, streams, and rural views.
You can park at the Tyrebagger carpark which is just off the A96 near Aberdeen airport. There are several walks you can do here including Elrick Hill, Brimmond Hill, Tyrebagger, and Kirkhill Forest. We just did Elrick Hill but we enjoyed it so much we want to go back. There’s a sculpture trail at Tyrebagger most of which we missed but sounds like it’s worth checking out. We only saw the “Moon Pool” and we didn’t realise at the time that it was part of the trail.
The paths are good albeit quite muddy in places. Some were icy and a bit slippery and some still had patches of snow. I took lots of beautiful photos.
The trees in this next photo are unusual in the way they curve backwards. I wonder how that happened? I assume it was the wind?
The only downside is you can hear the traffic on the A96 and AWPR which takes away some of the peace of the countryside. Hopefully that’ll be a thing of the past in 10 years when most people have electric cars. One of the things I like most about walks in the woods is the silence except for the sound of the wind and wildlife … and the occasional whining child.
rachel.blog 
I felt cold today, so I’ve stayed in all day in my jimjams. I got to tidy up under the big chest of draws though and found some missing scrabble tiles there, so there is that. Oh the wonder of dust bunnies and finding things lost. I’m now thinking of Totoro.
A day indoors in jimjams sounds good to me. Yesterday was a bit like that for us. And finding a long lost scrabble tile! What a great find!
Actually it was a [Z] and a [Y] plus some weird dice with [400] etc on the edges, a small battery, an unused note card with an envelope and dust bunnies, lots of them like on Totoro I asked them to leave and off they went.
When I go walking in woods or country, it’s the silence from our everyday noises that I like the most, too. I also enjoy the beach, but it’s not silent there in the same way. In the woods or country, my ears start tuning into the noises specific to them, and I find it very restful and soothing.
I don’t like man-made sounds so I don’t mind the sounds of the beach. It’s car noise that I find particularly irritating, even stressful. But any kind of machinery I don’t much like. Natural woodland sounds are very soothing. I sometimes play YouTube videos when I’m working that are basically just forest sounds.
I’ve never seen tress that curved before. There are a few near us that are bent but it’s weird how they go out then back in. Anyway, they are beautiful pictures.
The bending of those trees may also be the result of a slow downhill movement of soil. It tilts the trees but they readjust. Its called “creep” or “soil creep”.
Thank you! I’ve never heard of that before. Now I know. What we saw defniitely sounds like that.
You can find info on the sculpture trail thanks to a cache of the old website for it: https://web.archive.org/web/20081119135037/http://www.tyrebagger.org.uk/page/artists.html
The only ones remaining that I know of are 3, 5, 6, 9, 4, 17, 19
Oh I thought they’d all still be there? How come they removed them? Was it always meant to be a temporary exhibition?
There was disagreement between the council and the forestry commission on who was responsible for the upkeep, neither could be bothered, both happy to let it decay. They were gradually whittled away piecemeal over the years; some vandalised, some stolen, a few early removals were maybe reasonable health and safety measures, but some in the last year were just pointless jobsworth h&s. The FC also clearfelled an area with a couple in there and made no attempt to retain them.
Now that I think about it further, 11 is still there (visible on aerial photography: the square of trees in the centre of https://www.google.com/maps/@57.1850001,-2.2493062,255m/data=!3m1!1e3)
Some of 16 may still be around. 5 is sometimes hard to see as it gets buried under sediment in the stream.
Correction: 14 not 4