Woohoo! I've discovered how to add a few little tick boxes at the bottom of each post, to enable readers to record their reactions. Do please use them. I think I've identified the four most likely responses ...

Sunday 3 July 2011

The 2011 Challenge, day 11: Suie to Lumsden (2)

As I descended towards Aldivalloch, I could see The Buck in the distance. Shame ... but there'd be another chance to climb it, I felt sure.

There are three buildings marked on the map to the North of Aldivalloch, and I wondered whether one of them might be a bothy. I thought it worth taking the time to investigate for future reference. However, if you are going to do this, you have to turn off the track before you get into the sheep pasture, as I soon found out. Once into the sheep pasture, barbed wire fencing ensures that you cannot stray too far from the marked path. So I descended to the road, noting as I did so that there were two interesting old railway vans in use as agricultural stores at Aldivalloch and Aldunie. These intrigued me - they looked as though they could well be pre-Grouping (i.e. built before 1923) so I took some photographs, and when I got home I posted them on an internet railway forum to see if anybody could identify them. It didn't take long for the identifications to come rolling in ... and I was right to think that they were both pre-Grouping. One had been built by the North Eastern Railway, and the other was of North British origin.

I carried on into Cabrach, where I stopped for a bite of lunch, and then I followed the main road as far as the junction with the B9002. This was a somewhat scary experience, as the wind was gusting so strong that I would find myself being blown right out into the middle of the road before I could do anything to arrest my progress. So I tried to keep as keen a lookout for oncoming traffic as ever I could, and whenever something capable of killing me approached I would step well up onto the verge and stand still until it had passed.

Walking on roads in wind like that is not an enjoyable experience ... so much so, that I wonder whether I mightn't have been better off up on the ridge after all!

No comments:

Post a Comment