Tag: photos
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Loch Morlich
We went for a walk around Loch Morlich today. Loch Morlich is an inland fresh-water loch near Aviemore in the Highlands of Scotland. It’s a reasonably flat walk on a good path that goes through forest and along the beach. Yes, Loch Morlich, which is miles away from the sea, has a beach with sand.…
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Back to Craigendarroch
We went for a glorious walk up Craigendarroch today. The landscapes are beautiful at this time of year with a palette of yellows, oranges, golds, reds, browns, pinks, and greens. Craigendarroch is a steep and craggy hill overlooking the village of Ballater in Aberdeenshire. It’s covered in oak trees, hence the name Craigendarroch – craig…
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Newspaper pics
Elizabeth and I were in the paper last Saturday in a story about a council consultation for more walking and cycling links between the Bridge of Don and Aberdeen city centre. The photographer took lots of photos and I went onto their website this week to see the others (is it a bit vain to…
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A walk up Scolty Hill
We went for a walk up Scolty Hill today which is a small hill just south of Banchory. It’s about a 40 minute drive south west of Aberdeen to get to Banchory. The last time we walked up Scolty Hill it was snowing so it was quite different today. Everything was very lush and green…
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Pitmedden Gardens
Last Monday was a bank holiday here and we took the opportunity to visit Pitmedden Gardens. Despite being only 14 miles north of Aberdeen, we’ve never seen them before. We visited the café once on a trip to Tolquhon Castle but have never stopped to look at the gardens. Pitmedden Gardens is a recreation of…
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The Highland Club, Fort Augustus
We have spent a wonderful few days staying at The Highland Club in Fort Augustus. The Highland Club is a complex of holiday apartments in what was once a Benedictine monastery on the shores of Loch Ness. It was constructed in 1880 and home to monks and a private school for boys right up until…
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Caledonian Canal, Fort Augustus
Started in 1803 and completed 12 years late in 1822, the Caledonian Canal connects the North Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of 29 locks (not to be confused with lochs), 35km of man-made channel, and four natural lochs. It’s a feat of Scottish engineering, designed and built by Thomas Telford from Dumfries. Over…
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Aberlour
After the hottest Easter weekend ever a little bit of winter has returned and we saw patches of snow on the ground as we drove to Aberlour yesterday. It made me happy. I love the feeling of cold air against my cheeks and we didn’t get a lot of that this past winter. We drove…
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Pap of Glencoe
We walked part of the Pap of Glencoe walk which is a hill walk starting from Old Glencoe Road, just a little bit east of Strath Lodge Glencoe. It’s a rocky, boggy walk with bits that require scrambling on all fours. There are also streams that you need to cross over although with a bit…
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More pics of Glencoe
The last time I was in Glencoe was more than 20 years ago and I’d forgotten how beautiful it is. Unlike the east coast of Scotland the mountains here are rugged and domineering and make one feel small and insignificant which is comforting. April is a wonderful time of year to tour Scotland because there’s…
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Oban, Stalker Castle, and Glencoe
We visited the Oban Distillery in Oban today and did the tour. Kids are allowed on this tour which is great because Daniel and Elizabeth find it very interesting and distilleries are fascinating places. As is often the case with these things the process is much more complicated than you think and I’m always left…
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Ice on the River Dee
There are big chunks of ice on the River Dee today. I took pics. It’s very pretty.
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Merry Christmas 2018
One of the nice things about having a blog is it becomes an historical record of what I’ve done or where I was at a particular moment in time. I sometimes wonder what I was doing for Christmas in 2012 or 2013 and all I need to do is go back through the archives of…
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Malt whisky country
We finished our weekend in malt whisky country with a trip to the Glenfiddich distillery in Dufftown. Before leaving Glenlivet this morning – which is where we spent our weekend – I got this nice photo of the Glenlivet distillery from afar. The drive from Glenlivet to Glenfiddich is not very far: about 10 miles…
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Autumnal snow
It’s not often we get to see snow and autumn colours simultaneously but that’s exactly what we got today. We drove past this next distillery on our way to Grantown on Spey and the building looked particularly striking in the snow. It was one of those, “Wow, look at that!” moments in the car. I…
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The Glenlivet
The Glenlivet Whisky Distillery is about 1.5 hours north-west of Aberdeen in a beautiful, rural pocket of the Cairngorms. It’s surrounded by forests, rivers, hills, and farmland. The buildings are black in this next photo because the whisky production process attracts microorganisms causing it to go black. A fungus – Baudoinia compniacensis – feeds on…
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Aberdeenshire in the Autumn
A photographer friend of ours visited for a few days this week and took off before dawn each morning to capture the sunrise. One morning he got this shot of Dunnottar Castle which then made The Times the next day: Isn’t is marvellous? You can see the full version on his site at https://www.bigladder.co.uk/ We decided…
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Gathering llamas with the Queen
We had a fantastic weekend away at Glenshee Ecocamp and the Braemar Gathering. We stayed in a vintage train wagon which has been converted into off-grid accommodation. It was wonderful! Very quiet and peaceful (except for our noisy kids!) and lots of stunning scenery including a starlit sky at night. The kids were not bothered…
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The Bridge House Stables
We’re just back from a fantastic weekend away staying at the Bridge House Stables in Perthshire. It’s an old bridge built in 1881 over the River Ardle and now let as two holiday homes. The interior has been tastefully renovated and in keeping with the age of the bridge. Straddling the river means you can…
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The weekly yield
This is what I picked from my allotment yesterday. There is more I could have picked but didn’t, like kale, swiss chard, spinach, beetroot, and potatoes. The tomatoes are some kind of tiger variety and are meant to look stripy. I’m really happy to get them because a couple of months ago the plants looked…
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