My plan for this winter is to keep walking relatively long-distance but low-level walks to keep my ever-gradually-rustier body ready for the next hill-walking season. Last week’s walk was south of Aboyne, today’s north of it; more specifically, the village of Tarland. I parked my car in the village centre, picked up my gear and…
I guess the title sounds overly dramatic, but - trust me - in the context of the last year it does reflect my feelings when I walked through the forest of Glen Tanar. The walk, about 4-hour long, at various stages resembled many walks I'd done in Moray. There was a stretch along the edge…
Walking into a furnace; that’s how I felt the very moment I left the air-conditioned airport terminal in Berlin after having flown there from Scotland. Instantly I had to take off my fleece I’d donned all the way from Aberdeen. At that moment I couldn't possibly know it was the foretaste of what would I…
The weather forecast left me thinking hard whether to travel all the way to the West Coast or not. It was predicted to remain dry for most of the day, but overcast. The latter meant a fair chance for the tops to be shrouded in clouds and thus obscuring the views. The only way to…
Rather a bit unusually, the weather forecast was relatively favourable for a narrow strip of land along the west coast of northern Scotland; narrow, but wide enough to promise dry conditions on Slioch, a Munro I’d been eyeing for quite a while. With a fellow hillwalker we started our adventure shortly before 9am at a…
