5 - 7 November - Scotland to home

Thursday 5 November - to Moffat

Where was Bertie? He spent a night at Moffat C&CC campsite at a cost of £29.02 for a hardstanding pitch with electricity.

Our night in the Old Colliery (pub) car park was quiet enough, save for a few fireworks and a HGV that fired up its engine at just after 6am, and a whole lot quieter than the Park & Ride had been. When I'd booked it, I thought we might eat in the pub (I had seen a report that they would credit us the £10 we'd paid to stay in the car park, but hadn't verified whether that was true), but after looking at their menu, I decided I'd rather cook and eat in. That meant that we didn't even set foot in the pub, but as I'd booked and paid for our stay online, I didn't see any need to. It was only as we were leaving that it occurred to me that the booking form hadn't requested our registration number, so they had no way of knowing that we'd paid, and no one knocked on our door to check. 

We were away relatively early, for a 25-minute drive to the first of two hills I was to visit. A bike ride, a walk and a return bike ride had me back at Bertie for an early lunch, then another 10-minute drive took us to my second hill, which was all on foot and an absolute bogfest. 

We'd passed over into the Scottish Borders on our way to the first hill, and I have that county in my mind as one in which I've always enjoyed my outings. What struck me on these hills was the absolute monoculture of grouse shooting estates, with heather and tussocky grass and a dearth of trees. Add in the low cloud and miserable weather, and I wasn't taken with the area.

Not wanting to be a constant whinger (although Mick would completely support me in this complaint, as he was driving), but the B709 down to meet the A708 to Moffat wins our award for the worst road surface we have ever driven in the UK, and not just for a small section, but for miles. The A708 was in better condition, but it's a small road as A-roads go, so we were happy indeed to arrive in Moffat.

Friday 6 November - to Haworth

Where was Bertie? At Top Field C&CC certified location, for £22 for a hardstanding with electricity.

I'm perpetually surprised as to how far south in Scotland Moffat is, so it was less than a 2-hour drive to get to J36 of the M6, where we arrived early enough to nip to the garage to fill up with LPG* before meeting Conrad for lunch at Cafe Ambio. 

My bowl of soup was large and my accompanying sandwich huge and somehow I didn't expect the soup + sandwich combo to come with salad and coleslaw, but it did. Add a slice of cake, and we didn't need much for tea. 

We all needed to be away by half past two, in our case because we wanted to arrive at our next night stop before dark. That we did, and settled Bertie onto a pitch at Top Field - a good little campsite that we would happily use again if we had cause to be in that area. 

The evening was filled with the sound of fireworks. I don't think I have ever heard so many! 

(*We also filled the LPG on the way north, so know that this trip used 27 litres of gas. Due to our battery issues, we had a lot of electric hook up on this trip, but that still felt pretty good going considering how much we ran the heating, including on some of the campsites. Why run the gas heating when on electric hook up? A few possible reasons: 1) it heats the fabric of the vehicle much more than the oil filled radiator or fan heater, so retains the heat for longer; 2) it heats the water as a by product, so if the night is going near freezing, we'll run it for a short while before bed so that the residual heat of the water heater will stop the frost valve from dumping the water over night; 3) a couple of the places we stayed were on metered electric, where for cost efficiency we mainly used gas + oil-filled rad, rather than oil-filled rad + fan heater.

As a further aside, we dithered a bit in our packing as to whether to take the 450W oil-filled radiator and decided, as it's so small and light, that it was worth it even if it only got used a few times. Its output isn't enough to heat Bertie to a comfortable level, but it does take the chill off. Using it on a time switch so that it switched off an hour or so after bedtime and came back on sometime between 3 and 4am (exact times depending on the forecast overnight low), we were grateful to have it with us. Moreover, because it's oil filled, the heating element cuts in and out (unlike the fan heater, which is noisy and consumes a steady 750W), it's pretty efficient as electric heating goes.) 

Saturday 7 November - to home 

A parkrun to start our day, then a visit to Wentworth Castle Gardens. Like NTS, many English National Trust properties are now closed for the winter, but these gardens were open and were a small enough detour to make a visit worthwhile. 

The gardens themselves were as you might expect in winter: very little colour and lots of dead stuff, but the castle folly was worth seeing (so much bigger than I'd expected), and the greenhouse was the highlight (not just for the warmth in there!). The cafe was exactly as we have come to expect (good scones and pasties), even if this one did also have a very smelly dog in it for the first twenty minutes we were there. 

It was sunny as we drove out of Yorkshire, but the nearer we got to home the foggier it got. Harrumph, should have stayed away for longer! 

 

The house is an adult education centre and not open to the public ... except that blackboard told us that there are occasional tours, the November one having been yesterday 

Wentworth Castle, a folly that was much bigger and more interesting than I expected, having been built as a ruin. We went up to the top of the tower.

There would be a good view from up there on a clear day. This was not a clear day.

The highlight: the glasshouse, with each bed representing a different continent.
 

Sunday 1 to Wednesday 4 November - Perth

Sunday 1st November

Where's Bertie? He's at Scone Camping & Caravan Club campsite at a cost of £29.02 for a hard-standing pitch with electricity.

Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine!

The weather has come good, with a predicted week of high pressure sitting over the UK, and today was really glorious with clear blue skies. We should have made more use of the it, but Mick did some work, then we drove from Montrose to Perth, settled Bertie at the campsite, and Mick did more work, whilst I did some laundry. Unfortunately, my intention to visit a National Trust for Scotland (NTS) garden en-route, on the last day that it's open this year, completely fell out of my head until far too late in the day.

I also spent a good chunk of my time coming up with a plan for what we were going to do for the rest of the week. When I came to run this past Mick, he was surprised: rather than reeling off a list of hills, the plan involved a couple of days of culture (followed by a couple of hills). 

Monday 2nd 

Weather: A frosty night, followed by a dry and fine day. 

Mick begged time to do an hour's work this morning, which was fine by me as my planned activities for the day weren't going to take many hours and we were going to spend the night at Perth Park & Ride, where it would be advantageous (from the point of view of getting a space exactly where we wanted) if we arrived late in the afternoon. Then I rethought: given the choice between a free night in a car park rationing the heating for fear of another battery failure, or another night plugged into the mains and running an electric heater with gay abandon, the latter struck me as the better choice. I thus extended our stay on the campsite, we deployed our 'Taken' sign onto the pitch (the sign I made out of a cereal box and clear duct tape about 14 years ago - it's so seldom used that it's holding out just fine) and we headed out.

I'd booked us a day's parking at Asda (£4.89), which struck us as a good and busy place where Bertie was unlikely to come to any harm, and we strode off for the 1-mile walk into the city. That turned into just over a mile as we opted to precede our visit to the art gallery with brunch in a riverside establishment. We were there longer than expected, but only because the crossword we had with us required significantly more thought than is the norm, and we were determined to finish it, which in turn required extra drinks to be consumed.

The art gallery was varied with enough stuff to our tastes to keep us entertained for an hour or so. We finished our visit with a trip to the toilets, which wouldn't ordinarily be worth a mention, except that on arrival we had been specifically told to pop in before we left. Their walls are completely covered in murals. 

With a bit of shopping and Bertie's fuel tank topped up, back to the campsite we came*. 

Tuesday 3rd

Where was Bertie? Newcraighall Park & Ride at a cost of 50p for 24 hours.

Weather: Disappointingly drizzly (the sort that really soaks you) until about 1230, then dry but overcast for the rest of the day.  

A late change of plan. I'd tried to book us a guided tour of a NTS property for today, but they only had one ticket available, so I'd had to book for Wednesday instead. That put us at a loose end on Tuesday, but with a bit of poking around the internet, I found another NTS property in Edinburgh and established that we could park Bertie at Newcraighall Park & Ride, from where a return ticket to Edinburgh was £4.30 and took just 13 minutes each way. Even better, we could stay the night there too.

It was gone 11am by the time we reached Newcraighall, and having got uncomfortably wet in obtaining a parking ticket (the machine took about a week and a half to authorise the card transaction), we opted for an early lunch, to allow the rain to clear, before heading out. It had nearly stopped by the time we wandered the 2 minutes over to the train platform, and was finally dry by the time we reached Edinburgh.

The property we were visiting, Gladstone's Land (a 500-year old tenement that was built for mixed trade and residential purposes), is accessible on a self-guided tour basis until 1430, then there's a guided tour at 1500. I'd booked us onto the tour, which gave us time to kill, and it seemed a waste to be in Edinburgh and only drink tea somewhere. So we went to the National Gallery for an hour or so. By then we genuinely needed a cup of tea, and we managed to squeeze in a quick one before walking over to the Royal Mile. 

Incredibly, considering that we've been to Edinburgh before, when we saw the Royal Mile we were both pretty confident that we had never been on that street before. Our tourist trip to the city in 2014 was clearly not as comprehensive as it should have been! 

Catching the end of a street performer's show, filled five minutes before we announced ourself for the tour. On the dot of 3pm, it looked like there were just 4 of us, when five Spanish tourists came in and quickly bought tickets to join in. I'm curious as to how they came to know of the property, as it doesn't strike me as a mainstream tourist attraction and it's so tucked away that you'd be lucky to stumble across it. 

This was definitely a case where the tour added much more than we could have got by just walking around on our own, with the guide telling the story of each floor based on who lived there at a certain period in time - so we started on the third floor in 1911, when it was a boarding room occupied by two single men, moved down to the second floor which was a draper's shop in the 1760s, and ended on the first floor with the story of the family who bought and extended the property in the 1630s. 

Just under an hour later we disgorged back onto the Royal Mile, and after a stroll along it we thought we may as well go back to the National Gallery for another half an hour, until the restaurant we'd earmarked for tea opened. 

It was as we walked through the third floor of the gallery, trying to find our way to the 4th floor, that I got a sense of deja vu. Had we been here before, or was it just remarkably similar to some other gallery we've visited? As we walked back through the third floor, having finished on the fourth, that I became certain that this wasn't our first visit. Blog to the rescue: we were there on 15 February 2014. Mick has no recollection, and I suspect that we only visited the third floor on that occasion as it was an unplanned detour on our way back to the campsite (for future reference: we visited the second and fourth floors today). 

Leaving the gallery just before they closed, it was a ten minute walk over to Thistle Street, which had rather a back-road feel in the dark, and was certainly away from the hustle and bustle of Prince's Street. There we located Dusit, the Thai restaurant I'd chosen for our anniversary dinner (it's a bit of a tradition that we go for a Thai if we can). The food was excellent, and the staff to customer ratio must have been at least 4:1, as we were the only customers for the entirety of our visit. I trust they do get busy at other times, but I guess on the dot of 5pm isn't the most popular time to go out for food in the UK. 

We timed our return to Waverley to perfection: our train was already waiting on the platform. In contrast to our outward journey in was almost full, but we managed to get a couple of the staunchest seat-hoggers to move their bags so we could sit down, and within 20 minutes, we were back at Bertie. 

For a late addition to the plan for the week, it all worked out rather well and a good day was had. 

Oh, and after 2451 consecutive days of using the App, I finally finished the Spanish course on Duolingo. I think I now speak Spanish worse than I did a year ago (I feel like I forgot significantly more than I learnt in the last year) but far better than I did 6.5 years ago, when I knew but a few words and no grammar.

Gladstone's Land is the building between the two yellow arrows
 

Wednesday 4th

Where's Bertie? In the car park of the Old Colliery pub in Danderhall (Edinburgh) at a cost of £10.

Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine

Newcraighall Park & Ride may be convenient for going into Edinburgh, and for visiting Newhailes House (on the agenda for today) but being located between a busy road and the train line, it's not the quietest of locations. 

It had been another cold night too, but I volunteered to be the one to get out of bed to turn up the heating and put the kettle on, before Mick emerged to do some work, before we headed to Newhailes - a stately home on the edge of Musselburgh. I'd thought it was a 3-mile drive to get there, but when we set the SatNav we found it was only 0.8 of a mile. Clearly, we could have walked, but given the choice between leaving Bertie in a Park & Ride or a NTS car park at a busy property, I'd choose the latter every time.

I'm glad we arrived an hour and a half early, before our 11am tour, as it turns out that the cafe isn't big but is popular. We arrived in time to have a choice of tables, but it soon filled up. 

The house tour was an hour and a half long, and so good that time positively flew by. In summer they have a set of rooms that are open to the public, but in winter, in common with many NT properties in both England and Scotland, they close for a programme of deep cleaning, restoration and maintenance. Last year they decided to see if there was any interest in a winter tour that takes in parts of the property not usually open to the public. This was only the second day of the 'uncovered' tour for this year, and the first one given by our volunteer guide, but you wouldn't have known it. 

The potted history of the house is that it was built in the late 1600s, and was in the ownership of the same family from 1709 until 1997. From the mid-1940s, the family had moved to a few rooms upstairs, to save on heating costs. In 1971 the family line had died out, whereupon the wife of the final son continued to live in a small suite of rooms in one wing of the house, determined to protect the contents of the house and not to sell anything off to raise the funds she needed to maintain the place (although she did give the 7000 volumes in the library to the government in lieu of death duties when her husband died). Most similar houses went through periods of modernisation, particularly in Victorian times, but Newhailes remained as it was in the 1700s, and with the widowed Lady Antonia's determination to keep everything as intact as she could, the NTS took on the rarity of a house preserved in design, decor and furniture, as it was in the 1700s. 

Similar to Calke Abbey (not an abbey...), which we visited in August, repairs have been made to the property, but with efforts made to maintain much of it in the state of decay it was in when it was handed over to the Trust. So, the roof no longer leaks, but there are still water marks and peeling wallpaper (although bear in mind that we were visiting rooms that aren't usually visited). 

We now need to return next year to do the summer tour - although if I could only do one, I think I'd rather the one we did today, to see the surprising reality of how the family finally lived (in small, basic rooms in one section of a huge house) rather than the grand rooms previous generations of the family would have used in the property's heyday in the 1700s.

 Front of Newhailes House

Bedroom of the final son in the family line (who didn't own the estate as his father had, immediately before his death, put the property into trust to prevent his son from selling off any part of it). Despite appearances of this being a child's room, this was the room he was still using when he died in 1971 at the age of 56. His wife's room, in the same wing, was a normal bedroom - nothing fancy, but comfortable. 

The house had cupboards full of historical items when they took it over. With sunlight levels being low in winter, four items have been made available for viewing on this tour (although even then they were only uncovered for a couple of minutes for us). I always stand in awe of the skill exhibited in hand embroidered items like this apron...

...and this magnificent coat, complete with sweat stains under the arms. These items have only been made available for viewing this year, and we were on one of the first tours, thus we were told that fewer than 20 members of the public had previously seen these items. I'm very glad that our timings didn't have us at this property a few days earlier when we would have been on one of the summer 'public rooms' tours. 

 

 (*Last November I picked up a leaflet from this campsite giving a route for a self-guided tour of Perth. A couple of weeks ago, having written all sorts of stuff in the margins, I recycled it. This morning I went to the campsite's Information Room to pick up another copy, to find that they no longer provide any leaflets. If I'd kept the one I had, or even if I'd photographed it, we would have gone and found some points of interest whilst we were out.)

Sunday 25 - Saturday 31 October - Scotland

Sunday 25th (Cont.) - Tuesday 27th - Fern

Where was Bertie? He was at Gardener's Cottage campsite in Fern

Weather: Wild, in Storm Boelo, with forecast winds topping out at 66mph.

As I finished typing my last post, in the middle of Sunday, the winds were just peaking. We continued to get walloped throughout the afternoon and into the night, although it calmed down enough by evening to allow me to do the dash from Bertie's pitch to the dishwash, a distance of around 15m. I caught my foot on some tree debris on the way, but managed to stay on my feet.

Monday morning came and with it a quandary. Once we'd left the campsite and headed 10 miles north, I didn't really want to have to backtrack, but the weather forecast for Tuesday (55mph winds) was such that it would be beneficial to be back in a sheltered spot with electricity. To sit still for another two whole days, or to go out and come back? I couldn't bear the thought of the former, so we extended our stay with the campsite and headed out for another recce. 

Mick was to drop me just N of the Caterthuns (hill forts, N of Brechin), and we got there without any drama. Some big trees had come down, but the local community had obviously been busy (I can't believe it was the council acting so quickly) and all had been cut through and the roads cleared, with the only exception being that there was a cone blocking the turn we wanted to use to get to my start point, which we guessed was probably due to an uncleared tree on that road. Fortunately there was another way around that was only a couple of miles further. Mick then drove around to Edzell and visited Sinclair's Larder (cafe), whilst I walked there via a rather longer route. 

The recce was a particularly successful one (I'm not sure why it feels unsuccessful when I'm sent out to, say, find potential camping pitches, and I find none, as I can't magic up something that's not there and I've still found valuable information, but it always feels better to find that routes go and places you could pitch a tent are plenty) and despite a forecast of heavy rain all morning, I only got wet in the final 2km. Mick had walked out to meet me, so he also got caught, and he'd not troubled to don anything waterproof, but it wasn't heavy enough to make him uncomfortable. 

A trip to Brechin followed to sort out the empty state of Bertie's fridge, then back to the campsite it was, where the owners had surveyed the property in our absence and found they'd lost 16 trees the previous day - happily none near any of their pitches. 

Tuesday was our final day of sitting around on the campsite. The forecast did improve slightly, but with wind speeds peaking at over 50mph, it wasn't a day to be out and about. 

I take dozens of photos whilst out recceing, but generally of things like gates, tracks and flat areas of ground suitable for a tent, rather than of the views, giving slim pickings for blog photos.

I wondered how many Range Rovers have been repaired using parts from these two donor vehicles. 
 

Wednesday 27th - Glen Lethnot and Glen Esk

Where was Bertie? He spent a night at the road end in Glen Esk. 

Weather: We had another of those bizarre nights that was warmer than the days either side. Otherwise, to my recollection it was dry and bright.

Wednesday's plan had been a leisurely morning at the campsite, a visit to a cafe in Edzell, then an afternoon drive up Glen Esk, to position for a recce I would do on Thursday, as the wind on Wednesday was still a bit higher than I would prefer for a long, hard bike ride (by my standards; not by any competent cyclist's standards). Friday's plan was that Ali & Adrian (who were journeying over to meet us for a few days) would drive me up Glen Lethnot so I could recce a route over to Glen Esk, where I would rendezvous with Mick. Accommodation issues for A&A meant this plan would involve more back-and-forthing of Bertie than was sensible (if he was going to drive up Glen Esk, it made sense for him to only do it once), so my revised plan was that Mick would drive me to the foot of the Glen Lethnot, and I would tack an 8km road walk onto the front of the recce. Mick would then (via another solo cafe stop - I'm really not doing well for cafe visits on this trip!) pick me up in Glen Esk on our way up to the end of the glen for the morrow's recce. 

Had a vehicle come along soon enough, I would have happily stuck out my thumb and taken a lift up the glen, but it's a quiet road (so quiet, and so open, that in hindsight it wouldn't have been any problem to drive Bertie up there). Two cars passed me on their way out of the glen, but the first on its way in was when I had 2km to go, and weighing up the inconvenience to the driver of having to make multiple stops to pick me up and drop me off, I decided it wasn't worth troubling them at that point. A while later, I came to realise that I hadn't put the gpx file of the recce route on my phone, and after a phone call to Ali (it's amazing where phone signals reach in Scottish glens these days!), I ended up walking a further 1km up the road, so I probably should have flagged down the estate vehicle. 

It was a pleasant walk between the glens, with no access issues but a dearth of good camp spots, and I reached the Fernybank Bridge to find Mick walking towards me.

The car park at the end of the glen was surprisingly quiet, and by dark we were alone, although not for many hours as at around 8pm two other motorhomes arrived at the same time. By everything we observed the following day, it was just freak timing and they weren't together. 

 

Road walk up Glen Lethnot, during which I came to realise that I've never been in this glen before.

 

River North Esk running a bit high at the moment 

Looking down to the east end of the Clash of Wirren

 
Thursday 28th

Where was Bertie? He arrived in the car park of the Park Hotel for a 3-night stay. Happily, his favourite level spot - just about the only one without any tree branches in the way - was available. 

Weather: A lovely sunny morning, with a bit of cloud building later.

I was a little jealous of our motorhoming neighbour in Glen Esk this morning, as he headed out on his electric mountain bike. I was an hour behind him on my manual bike, with the expectation that I would only make it 6 or 7km through my route before I had to continue on foot. 

I was thus chuffed to bits, as I ground my way in first gear up the final significant climb on the route, to realise that I was going to make it the whole way to my destination of the Stables of Lee.

Having stopped to do all the necessary explorations on the outward leg, there was nothing to stop me whizzing back down the glen as fast as I dared, which isn't very fast at all, but a whole lot quicker than the outward leg had been. That said, there were still a couple of first gear inclines on the way back, but neither of them was long. 

I'd just passed the old cemetery at the E end of Loch Lee, when I heard a shout behind me. Mick had just walked out of the graveyard to see a bike going past, and a few moments later realised it was me. Good job he left when he did, otherwise we would have passed like ships in the night and I'd have been back at Bertie, without any keys to get in, wondering where Mick had got to!

The ride had been hard on my shoulders, wrists and back, so I was perfectly happy to dismount at that point and walk back with Mick. 

After another hour of loitering in the car park, we headed out and over to the Park Hotel, where later in the evening we had a Traitors-viewing party in Ali & Adrian's room. 

Heading out along Loch Lee

Johnny Gordon's Shiel and some lovely autumn colours
 

Friday 30th - House of Dun

With all of my recces now complete, we had nothing on the agenda for today, so we drove out to House of Dun, a National Trust for Scotland (NTS) property. Entry to the house is by guided tour only, and a good tour it was, although with the slight complaint that it would have been nice to have had a minute to look around each room once the guide had finished her spiel. A couple of times I found myself scurrying to catch up with the group (a small group, with just 6 of us), on one occasion wondering where it was they'd gone. 

Just last Friday, the property finished an inventory of all the books that were left in the house when it was handed over to the NTS in the 1980s, including a first edition King James bible, and a full set of unread first edition JM Barrie books, signed by the author. The guide said that they're hoping to start some themed tours next year, including one focusing on the books, so I need to check when we're in the area in May whether that has come to fruition. 

Back in Montrose, and with A&A back from their recce up in Stonehaven, we convened for dinner in Bertie. It was as we sat down to eat that we turned on the lights in Bertie's lounge area, which should have been unremarkable, except that soon after finishing our meal, suddenly all the lights went off. That was somewhat concerning, as it was clear that the control unit had shut down, and when it came back on we realised that was because the leisure battery had dropped below 11v. Considering we'd had a good amount of sunshine and had been for a drive, and thus had a full battery at sunset, and had used no appreciable power except for the lights (which are all LED), and further given that we have a 150Ah battery, that most definitely should not have happened and thus my assessment last week that the leisure battery wasn't quite dead yet may have been somewhat inaccurate.

We ran the engine for 15 minutes, whilst we did the dishes, at the end of which the battery was reporting itself to be full again. That could easily have been a false reading, but three hours later, it was still full, and even by this morning it had only dropped to 12.5v. Unfortunately, we're not going to be anywhere long enough to get a new battery delivered to us, so we'll just have to manage with what we've got for another week. 

House of Dun

 

 A disappointing scone on our first NTS cafe visit. I've never yet had anything but excellent, fresh scones at National Trust (England) cafes.

Saturday 31st - Montrose

Opening day for entries to TGO Challenge East, so Mick was going to be occupied from late morning, but we were free earlier on, so we partook in parkrun, during which we established that we are still not fully recovered from whatever lurgi we both caught three weeks ago. In my case, my throat & upper respiratory tract were sore again and every time I gently jogged for a couple of minutes, my heart rate would shoot up into the 190s. 

I thus sat around for the rest of the day, as I suppose did Mick, but he was working. I ventured over to the hotel bar for lunch and again at tea time, even though I had no appetite for the latter. We then retreated for our final night in the car park for this trip.  

 

 

Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th - Fern (via Backwater Reservoir)

Where's Bertie? He's spending three nights in the relative shelter of Gardener's Cottage campsite, where he's been a number of times before (most recently in May this year). It's still £20 including 10kwh of electricity, plus £1 for a 6-minute shower.

Weather: Friday - dry until the middle of the day then increasingly wet. Saturday - calm and dry morning, getting a bit breezy as Storm Boelo approached. Sunday - absolutely wild as I type this, half an hour before the wind speeds are due to peak at 66mph.

Checking Bertie's leisure battery status when I got up, it was with some alarm that I found it reporting a voltage of 11.2. Yikes! Allowing a lead acid battery to go below 11.9v doesn't do it any good at all. Moreover, it was going to be a problem in the current weather if our battery couldn't cope with running the heating for a couple or three hours a day. The problem with reading a voltage off a battery is that you get a false reading if there's any draw (or input) currently on the battery, and because it had been such a cold night, the heater fan had been on high for a while by the time I got out of bed. Happily, once I'd turned the heating off, the voltage slowly settled at a more acceptable level - phew, the battery isn't quite dead yet. 

Once that was sorted, my mind turned to the weather forecast, which had now improved from 95% chance of heavy rain all day, to a 70% chance at 8am, rising in increments to 95% by 11am. With the wind speeds being unremarkable, I decided to omit the other Marilyn I wanted to do in the area in favour of getting another TGOCE recce done, this one taking me from Glen Isla (initially retracing my steps from the end of yesterday) and over to Backwater Reservoir. It's a route that Mick and I took in 2009 on the TGOC, in wet weather and poor visibility. Thankfully the cloud base this morning was high - indeed, I even saw some glimpses of blue sky along the way.

As I set out, I figured that if I could get 5k before it rained on me, then even if it remained wet the rest of the way, I would have done well. When a few drops fell on me at 4km, I quickly popped my pack off, dug out my waterproof gloves, put my pack back on ... and the rain stopped again. I completed the 12k outing without so much as another drop hitting me. Indeed, so pleasant was it that as I approached Backwater, I sent Mick a message suggesting that he stroll out to meet me, which he duly did. Had I been five minutes behind myself, he wouldn't have appreciated my suggestion, but as it was, I'd just got my shoes off inside Bertie when a gentle pitter pattering was heard on his roof, and a few minutes later it was drumming. Once again, I'd timed myself to perfection.  

Having booked this campsite at Fern for a couple of nights, I now realised that I wouldn't be able to deliver on the breakfast I'd promised Mick at the cafe at Peel Farm (although had I thought about it within twenty minutes of finishing my recce, we could have made it before the noon cut off time). As it was, we popped by for lunch, during which time it occurred to me that there was no point driving past my next recce location, only to have to drive back to it in a few days time. It wouldn't be worth a 12-mile backtracking round trip next time the weather was good just to avoid half an hour of unpleasant weather now, which was all that would be required, if we could get Bertie to the nearest car park (last year I'd walked in from a few miles away, and hadn't checked out the car park, but my recollection of the lane to get there was that it would be fine for Bertie. As it turned out, the access track to the car park is in a dreadful state, but Bertie was easily able to cope with it).

Then onto Fern we came, to batten down the hatches for Storm Boelo. 

Yesterday (Saturday) morning was the calm before the storm, giving us a 3-hour window to go out and do something nearby, except that there's nothing obvious nearby to go and do. So after showers and a few chores, we turned Bertie around so he was facing the predicted wind direction for the worst part of the storm (just S of W), being sure that he was out of the reach of any tree that might fall, and just sat around and waited for the weather. 

We fully expected a rough night, but the shelter of the wall of the walled-garden that sits 20m in front of us, combined with being head on into the wind meant it wasn't bad at all. In fact, I slept for 8 solid hours, without stirring once.

As I type this in the middle of Sunday, it has got wild out there. The gusts are swirling around, so we're getting walloped from the side every now and then. Fortunately, the rain hasn't reached us yet and the sun is on the windscreen, so after days of being huddled under blankets and wearing hats at all times, we're currently enjoying it being 23 degrees inside without the need for any heating. In fact, I've just checked the forecast again and it seems that the big band of rain is now going to miss us, so if we're lucky this sun will last until sunset ... which will come an hour earlier today than it did yesterday.  

Lentil & veg soup with a scone the size of my head for me, Cullen Skink pie for Mick. 
 

21 to 22 October - Glen Shee and Glen Isla

Wednesday 21st - Braemar & Glenshee Ski Centre

Where was Bertie? He spent another night at Glenshee Ski Centre 

Weather: Wet with a variable cloud base. 

We weren't in a rush to leave Braemar, so after getting Bertie largely ready to leave, we walked into the village, had coffee and a crossword at The Bothy cafe, then allowed the Coop to relieve us of a large sum of money for a few groceries in their poorly stocked store.

The servicing of Bertie's tanks completed our stay in Braemar (oh, and I got the balance of our electricity credit refunded - we'd used £3.40 across these two nights, at 31p/kwh), and rolled off up the road, although only a couple of miles, as the first stop was Auchallater, for me to nip up a hill in the rain and low cloud - which wasn't as bad as it sounds as there wasn't a breath of wind.

With Mick relocating to a layby a few miles up the road, I was able to do a linear route (albeit with a small loop where I missed a turn and nearly descended the wrong side of the hill), then onward to Glenshee we went, popping Bertie back into the spot he'd vacated a few days ago. 

With the next spell of bad weather due on Friday, I thought we might return to the same car park after a quick trip out on Thursday for another couple of nights, but that plan was thwarted by a mobile phone mast having gone out of service (I assume - we've always had a good signal up there before, and now neither of us had any signal at all) and if we were going to sit still for a whole day, we needed to be able to do some work online, not to mention the important issue of being able to stream Traitors on Thursday and Friday nights.

As I've mentioned before, we carry many mobile phones (4 at the moment with 5 SIMs on three different networks between them), so I was able to nip over to the cafe and use their wifi (which sadly didn't quite stretch to being usable over at the motorhome spaces) to put some credit onto a phone on the Vodafone network (our main phones are on EE and 3). Standing in the lobby juggling three phones, trying to work out which SIM was in which phone, I'm sure I looked like some sort of shady character.

As the weather transpired, I'm now happy that circumstances caused us to move on.

Thursday 22nd - Glen Isla

Where was Bertie? In a parking area in Glen Isla, within a mile S of Little Forter. 

Weather: Dry and bright, with a cold start. Snow fell above about 900m overnight.

The best weather forecast for the week, so I made the most of it. First an out-and-back to visit a Corbett by Spittal of Glenshee, then a TGOC E recce taking me from Westerton of Runavey via Loch Beanie to Glen Isla, followed by a linear route over a 740m Marilyn, that I attacked pathlessly up its W side. It was a long and tiring day, not seeing me back at Bertie (who had relocated into Glen Isla) until gone 4pm. 

Fortunately by putting Mick's phone up on Bertie's roof we were able to get just enough signal to stream Traitors.

 

snowy Cairngorms viewed from Ben Gulabin 

Heading E from Westerton of Runavey on an old, grassy track

Looking back to Loch Beanie

Looking down into upper Glen Isla

Atop Badandua Hill. I'd been sweating cobs on the steep, sheltered ascent. Once I got to the top it was suddenly rather chilly.

Looking up Glen Isla from the other side of the glen.

Thursday 15 to Tuesday 20 October - Scotland

Thursday 15th

Where was Bertie? A night at Faskally Holiday Park at a cost of £33 including electricity

I'd intended to do a TGOC East recce on our way down to Faskally, but Mick was still rather poorly, with a high fever as well as general cold symptoms so we didn't get an early start and I deferred the recce by a day, even though it would require a minor backtrack.

A stop for a few essentials in Newtonmore, then a killing-time pause at House of Bruar for 15 minutes, and we arrived at the holiday park 2 minutes after the earliest arrival time. 

We soon had Bertie plugged in and then suddenly it was teatime. I have absolutely no idea what happened to the intervening hours, but they certainly weren't spent doing any of the chores I'd intended to do upon arrival at the campsite!

Friday 16th

Where was Bertie? He spent another night in the little car park alongside the A924, about 5 miles east of Pitlochry. 

The quandary with the recce I needed to do (in Glen Girnaig), was that in order to be sure of a space in the Killiecrankie Visitor Centre car park, we would need to get there early, but if we arrived early we would be foregoing hours of included electricity at the campsite, and that seemed a shame as we'd paid for it. 

Then it occurred to me that Killiecrankie really is only a couple of miles along the road from Faskally campsite, I had a bike at my disposal, and if I was on the bike, I could ride the first part of the recce route too. I reckoned that if I could be out the door at 8am, I'd be back in time to have a shower, before we had to vacate our pitch at noon.

The 8am start wasn't quite achieved, but I was on my way at twenty past. The ride in was hard, mainly because of how much uphill was involved and the gradients, but also as I was now sickening with the lurgi that I thought I'd dodged when my couple of days of feeling off colour earlier in the week didn't amount to anything.

The outing was a circuit in glorious surroundings, but it was also somewhat nugatory. One of my missions was to find a way to bypass a wooden walkway that had been in a dangerous state when I used it last year. I achieved that, but I also chatted to the workmen who are in the process of replacing the walkway, and established that no bypass will be needed by next May. I then needed to check out another path, but soon found a locked and unclimbable gate in a deer fence - not a problem for me (I scaled the fence), but it makes the route unsuitable for TGOC East purposes. I continued along the route 95% sure that there was now no value in the rest of my recce, but again, the surroundings were lovely and if it wasn't for the raging sore throat and the time pressure of wanting to be back on the campsite in time for a shower, I wouldn't have even thought twice about the merit of continuing. 

Thanks to a very easy return bike ride, I was back at the campsite before 11.30 and achieved uncommon efficiency in getting showered whilst Mick stowed the bike. We left our pitch with a whole 9 minutes to spare. (Mick had tried to extend our stay whilst I'd been out, but they'd not had any cancellations, and there was not a pitch to be had.)

A pitstop in Pitlochry (mega busy - it's 'Enchanted Forest' time of year) for some more supplies, then it wasn't far to our overnight spot, where we frittered the rest of the afternoon away.

Saturday 17th

Where was Bertie? At Glenshee Ski Centre, where a pitch with electric hook up costs £15, but if you want water or waste it's another £5 for each extra service you want. 

I think we may have to stop using the park up on the A924. One year to the day since I woke up in that layby feeling very unwell, I woke up in that layby feeling rather unwell, although this time with whatever cold-like lurgi Mick & Ali have been suffering, rather than a stomach bug. That meant that for the second year in a row, I wasn't going to be doing the Glen Fearnach recce that I'd had on the agenda.

The crying shame about this was that we were now entering a three day weather window of spectacular blue skies, and frosty nights, and given my complete lack of energy, it looked very much like we were going to be sitting them out. The forecast after that involved a rain symbol every day for the next two weeks. 

Really not the best start to the trip, but there was nothing to be done, other than to book a pitch up at Glenshee, so that we could get some power into Bertie's battery, and do a lot of sitting around. 

Sunday 18th to Tuesday 20th

Where's Bertie? He's at Braemar Caravan Park at a cost of £30 per night, plus electricity at 31p/kwh (we used £1.82 on our first night)

I'm pleased to say that I woke up on Sunday morning feeling massively better. The sore throat was still persisting, but my short-lived sore lungs and face-ache had resolved. I was optimistic that I would be able to take advantage of Monday's good weather, even if Sunday was going to be another day of largely sitting around. A cafe visit was off the agenda (not wanting to spread germs), and with such good weather and it being a Sunday in school holidays, we weren't confident that we would be able to park in Braemar if we got down there early. So, we hung around at Glenshee until 1pm, then drove down to Braemar campsite.

We did actually manage a recce on Sunday, but it was less than a kilometre long, starting from the campsite, so it didn't overly tax us. We even tagged a gentle stroll through the village onto the end of it. 

I then spent most of the rest of the afternoon doing laundry. Early in the trip to need to do laundry, but with Mick's persisting fever (read: extreme nighttime sweating), and not knowing when we may next find ourselves with laundry machines at our disposal, it would have been negligent to have passed by the opportunity. 

We checked out of the campsite at 9 on Monday morning, although with the comment that we would likely be back in a couple of days. Out to Linn of Dee we drove, where I walked a 15km circuit up the glen, going out at a good pace on the track that runs up the N side of the Dee to the Geldie Burn/Bynack Burn confluence, then back at a much slower pace on the pathless terrain on the S side of the water. It felt like an odd thing to do on a day when water levels were so low that I could have forded at any point, to reach that perfectly good track on the other side. However, that wouldn't have served the purpose of the recce, so I did as I had been asked.

I fear that my photos don't do justice to how spectacular this outing was. 

We'd intended to spend the night at Linn of Dee, so that I could visit a Corbett on Tuesday morning, but the forecast was such a story of heavy rain and high winds for the morrow that a hill looked unlikely. There seemed little point in spending the night at Linn of Dee for any other reason, mainly because it's so cold in that car park. It doesn't get much sun, and as Mick sat in Bertie wearing hat and jacket and hiding under a blanket, he was surprised to see me return in my shirt sleeves and exclaimed as to how I wasn't freezing*. The answer was that about 200m away from the car park, it was actually quite warm in the sunshine, but I could feel the temperature dropping as I crossed the road on the final approach to Bertie). We thus decided to return to Braemar campsite and spend another couple of nights plugged into the mains. (*When I'd set out at gone 1030, it had been -3 degrees in that car park, and as I headed up the glen I wondered whether I'd accidentally left my toes behind as for all I could perceive they were absent from my feet. It was only when I got out into the sunshine that I finally started to warm up.)

That brings us to today, and in common with the same day last year, I feel like I've been conned by the weather forecasters. That 95% chance of heavy rain all day has materialised to be many hours of mizzly rain and quite a few dry hours. I took myself out to walk a short low-level from the campsite, and there was no notable wind either, making me think that I could have made it up my hill, even if I wouldn't have had any visibility and would have returned with a filthy bike. 

Instead, we've been to the Bothy cafe, where I accidentally over-ordered toast (when asked 'do you want one round or two' I understood the question to be one slice of bread or two, but it turned out to be 'one serving of two slices or two servings'), and Mick has got on with some work that he's been meaning to do for days whilst I've tapped out these blog posts - so all in all, a productive day. 

Hopefully, after a rather disappointing start to the trip, we are now back in good health and it's now only going to be the weather that mars our fun! 

 Photos all from Monday, in reverse order:

Looking over the confluence of the Geldie and Bynack Burns to the Red House Bothy

 

Heading up the glen on the good track on a glorious, if cold morning

 

Bit of a frosty start on Braemar campsite.

 

 

 

Friday 9 to Wednesday 14 October - Newtonmore/Kingussie/Glen Feshie

Friday 9 October
Where was Bertie? He spent the night at one of his regular haunts: Broxden Park & Ride, Perth.

When Mick's appointment for his eye ultrasound finally came through (after a delay due to the consultant failing to request it) for late on Thursday afternoon, we realised that we would be able to make it up to Newtonmore for the TGO Challenge reunion weekend. So, Bertie was packed and on Friday morning we set out, with the SatNav set to Perth.

Pauses were had for fuel (funny that 195.9/litre can result in an exclamation of cheapness, after weeks of not seeing anything below 199.9/litre), and LPG, plus a short lunch break. Otherwise, it was just a day of driving, ending with me declaring once again that Perth is about an hour too far for me to comfortably travel in a day. If only there was somewhere equally handy a bit further south.

We settled into the Park & Ride car park, which was as busy as ever, and a bit noisier overnight than I recall it being before. Perhaps we don’t usually find ourselves there on a Friday night.

Saturday 10th
Where was Bertie? He spent two nights parked on a back road in Newtonmore.

After a parkrun to start our day, and more fuel put into Bertie’s tank, up to Newtonmore we came. Bertie was parked in the same spot that we used on our previous visit, it being the nearest Bertie-sized parking to Ali & Adrian’s house. I was all for walking the long way around, in view of the wet grass, but Mick thought we would be okay just walking down the field. He had returned to Bertie for his forgotten glasses when I slid in some mud, fell and managed to spectacularly cover myself with mud and slurry. I was wearing both the jeans and shirt that I intended to wear for the dinner that night, and didn’t have any alternative clothes with me - unless I wanted to go in leggings and t-shirt (and, in all honesty, I doubt anyone would have batted an eyelid if I had).

We often turn up at friends’ houses and request to use the shower. This time I turned up covered from shoulder to toe in foul smelling filth and asked to use the washer and dryer too. By late afternoon, I was outfitted again.

Around 40 people came along for the reunion dinner, and we knew all bar a couple - I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing, as it does demonstrate that not many new Challengers come along to these events.

It was a late night, but for once Mick and I weren’t the last standing (I’m claiming that, even though the other contenders for being last to leave were just heading up to their rooms as we stepped out the door for the dark walk back up to Bertie.

Incidentally, bar the 2 October when I wore longs, I managed to stay in my shorts until 8 October, so warm was it at home. Scotland has been a bit of a shock to the system, putting me straight from summer into winter attire.

Sunday 11th
Where was Bertie? He spent a second night in Newtonmore

We’d intended to move to Kingussie on Sunday, but after I’d met up with Ali for a short walk up the glen, we convened in her kitchen to plan the TGOC East recces that are needed for the 2027 event. Time then passed by over many cups of tea, during which we all sat down to catch-up on Saturday’s Strictly, followed immediately by the results show. Then, suddenly, it was bed time, at which point it didn’t make sense to move on.

By the end of the day, Ali and I both felt like we were coming down with colds. I clutched at the straw that, in my case, it was just a mild reaction to the dog.

Monday 12th
Where was Bertie? At the motorhome Aire in Kingussie, at a cost of £10.

My day started with the realisation that I’d made a significant packing omission: I’d brought my bike, but forgotten a bike helmet. Ali to the rescue - although I didn’t stay for long when I picked it up as she now decidedly had a cold.

We needed to be in Kingussie by 11am, when Mick had a meeting at the Railway cafe, but we arrived an hour early, so had time for coffee and a crossword before I left him to talk shop with Sue & Di.

I’d like to describe all the active things we did to fill the rest of the day, but I felt so ill-inclined to go out in the cold that a walk through the village and a quick trip to the Coop was all we managed. I did, however, come up with a route and itinerararary for this trip that should see quite a few of the TGOC East recces accomplished and hopefully a few hills bagged too.

Tuesday 13th
Where was Bertie? He spent a second night at the Aire in Kingussie, mainly because it has an excellent phone signal and I had a video appointment on Wednesday morning.
Weather: What bizarre weather! Monday had seen a daytime high of 12 degrees. Tuesday was the same, but in between the night was a steady 15 degrees between 10pm and 6am. The brief spell of warmth ended as a band of heavy rain came through.

My first recce was in Glen Feshie, and surely no one has ever complained about an outing in that glen? Where best to park (taking into account the size of Bertie vs the size of the roads into the glen)? We opted for Uath Lochans on the basis that it gave me a shorter bike ride that would take me further up the glen (to the bridge at Stronetoper) than if we parked on the N side of the river.

Mick wasn’t able to join me as we only have one bike, but in any case, he had now come down with the cold (I was still feeling vaguely coldy, but not enough to stop me doing anything), so once he’d retrieved my bike from the boot whilst I faffed with my pack, he spent the day resting.

I had a good outing, getting the info that had been requested for the TGOC East routes. Glen Feshie really is a lovely glen, and I was blessed with sunshine for much of the first two-thirds. Alas, it then rained until just before I got back to my bike. It had been far less showery than forecast, but that one shower went on far too long to be classed as a shower in my book!

The one eye-opening aspect of the day was seeing people tackling the ford of the Allt Garbhlach. To me the approach was obvious: walk across the ford, with the water slow moving and only up to ankle height. I must have witnessed another dozen people, all bar two of whom opted to cross further down where the water was narrower, but faster and the bed much rockier. A few managed to cross on a fallen tree trunk, but the consequences of a slip or loss of balance half way across would have been more significant than the wet feet of using the ford.

As for the two who also used the ford, I’d come across them stymied on the west bank when I’d arrived. I simply walked across, then offered to throw my walking poles back for them to use in turn. It was only after they were safely across that I realised that they’d still need to get back later, and I commented that we’d just need to time our return journeys to coincide at that point. “We will be about an hour and a half” they said.

My outing was 4 or 5k longer than theirs, but as I came back past Ruigh Aiteachain bothy, they joined the path just ahead of me. I was moving faster, but I also needed to walk a few loops on my way back. I thus met them three more times, not always going in the same direction. They were thirty seconds behind me by the time I crossed the water, and thus with some more walking pole flinging, we all got back across securely and without drama. Impressive timing!

As I’ve done so many times before, I spent the outward ride thinking there was a surprising amount of downhill, wondering why the flat bits were so hard, and slightly dreading the return ride. Once again, the return ride turned out to be predominantly downhill and the reason the morning’s flat sections were hard was because they were uphill. I really have some slant perception issues! I’d been 35 minutes on the outward ride, but it only took me 19 to get back, whereupon we scurried to get the bike away, as the next rain was just arriving.

If it hadn’t been for my need for a good phone signal in the morning, we likely would have spent the night where we were, but as it was we returned to Kingussie.

Wednesday 14th
Where’s Bertie? A third night at the Aire in Kingussie.

Not much to say about today. Mick was feeling rather poorly, so after we’d packed away ready to move, and were within 10 minutes of the noon depart-by time, he decided that what he’d like to do today is absolutely nothing. I thus extended our stay.

Another motorhome has joined us this afternoon and chose the spot right next to us. On this occasion, this is a good thing (even though all other spots are empty), as the wind is gusting over 50mph this afternoon and he’s providing a good wind block!

It’s due to calm down as we go into evening.

We are definitely moving on tomorrow - I’ve booked and paid for a night at a campsite.

Talking of which, there’s a real dearth of campsites in these parts (three in Aviemore, one in Blair Atholl, one in Pitlochry). We had no plans to go to Aviemore, but as it’s not too far away and as we’d welcome some electricity, I looked to see how much they were. The most expensive was over £47. The cheapest £42. Is it just me who thinks that’s ridiculous? We decided we can manage without electricity for one more night … and that Bertie’s leisure battery is probably reaching the end of its life. 

Most of the photos I took were of the things I was recceing, rather than of the views, but here are a couple of nice sunny glen shots, taken before the rain came: