Another delayed typed-it-but-didn't-publish-it post. It's really just for my own records, so I'd recommend going and reading something more interesting elsewhere!
Monday 25th
Where was Bertie? He spent a night at the Back of Hill of Fare car park
Weather: Mainly sunny and suddenly warm
After availing ourselves of the shower facilities again, we announced our intention to leave the Temporary Holiday Site at Montrose – a necessary part of the process as there’s a height barrier at the end of the access road, and one of the wardens needs to go and open and close it for every arrival and departure.
A quick supermarket trip, then north-westwards we headed, with our afternoon’s objective being Hill of Fare. For future reference, I should note that in Fettercairn there’s an arch that spans the B road with a width restriction of 2.3m and a sign saying ‘cars only’. As Bertie is more slender than that and could easily fit through, we decided that for these purposes he is a car (he is, after all, a Class M vehicle), but in future I’d try to remember to go another way.
Our destination car park was empty, bar a chap in a works truck who sat around for an hour or so before leaving, and proved to be suitable for a night-stop. A good thing, as I didn’t have a Plan B and, having now decided that I had a cold, I wasn’t really in the market for rushing through multiple hills so that we could find somewhere to spend the night that wouldn’t require a backtrack.
Tuesday 26th and Wednesday 27th
Where was Bertie: He spent two nights at Tarland Camping & Caravanning Club Site at a cost of £27 per night.
Weather: Lots of sun and warm
Whilst looking to see what the parking opportunities were in Tarland, I found the C&CC Club Site. To my surprise, even though it was a school holiday week, the price was reasonable, so I booked two nights, allowing us to go and walk a circuit, taking in the summit of Pressendye, on Wednesday.
First, though, I had two hills on the way to Tarland, and having done those we were still a bit too early to arrive at the campsite, so we parked up in The Square, and would have gone to the café, except it’s closed on a Tuesday and Wednesday.
Arriving at the campsite a few minutes after the earliest arrival time, I was asked if we wanted a pitch in the sunshine or the shade. With hindsight the correct answer was ‘near the toilet block’, as needing to do laundy, have a shower, and do dishes, it was a lot of walking back and forth from the sunny pitches, right at the far end of the site, to the amenities near the entrance.
Buying a laundry token a while later, the warden commented that I wouldn’t need a dryer token today. So it seemed with the warm sunshine, but by the time the washing cycle finished, the sky had clouded over and it was looking threatening. The forecast confirmed a high chance of showers, but I optimistically pegged it out anyway – a good call as it never did rain.
Wednesday morning we spent out walking, then Wednesday afternoon I set about processing the first batch of TGO Challenge 2026 All-Routes images. That was something of a trial, as phone signal at the campsite (and in Tarland in general) was non-existent on my network, weak on Mick’s, and the campsite wifi was also really slow (I think due to the quality of connection in this area, rather than the campsite not buying enough bandwidth).
I often hear people lauding places that don’t have phone signal or wifi, saying that holidays are for getting away from it all. I say if you want to get away from it all, then don’t turn your device on, but in our case, we need connectivity most of the time (I would also make the distinction that we are living on the road, rather than on holiday). It was for the lack of internet that we didn’t stay another night.
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Thursday 28 th and Friday 29 th
Where was Bertie? He spent two nights at Black Bull Byre Motorhome Aire at a cost of £15 per night including electricity (it’s £10 without)
Weather: Sunny and warm, but windy on Friday.
We started our day by walking into Tarland to the café that had been closed when we’d arrived on Tuesday. There we received the warmest of welcomes. The scones weren’t out of the oven yet, but we were happy to wait, so we ordered drinks (“Just ask if you want more water in your teapot” is such a simple thing to say to every tea-drinking customer, most of whom probably don’t take them up on it, as the teapots are amply sized, but it just gives a good impression (I am slightly scarred by twice in recent weeks having ordered tea and been served a cup the approximate size of a thimble)).
Walking back to the campsite in good time to be off our pitch by noon, we did the last few chores, visited the service point, then wondered what to do with ourselves as our next intended night stop hadn’t answered the phone nor yet returned our call. We opted to drive back into the village to contemplate our options, whereupon we got the call back from the Aire, confirming they had a space, but I thought it felt a bit impolitely early to head straight there (we were only 4 miles away). “We could go back to the café for lunch?” one of us suggested, so that’s what we did. The staff were amused to see us back so soon.
Then onto Black Bull Byre, a stopover chosen for being conveniently positioned for a hill that was on my hit list. The most recent review of this Aire on Park4Night gave it one star, citing sloping grass and an access track more holed than a golf course; every other reviewer had given it five stars. We are with the majority. Yes, the access track was potholed when we drove in, but it’s a farm access track and I think rather unrealistic to expect it to be smooth, and it was fine when taken slowly. By the time we drove out it was a lot less potholed, as they’d started repairing it whilst we were there. As for the parking, we were on perfectly level hardstanding, which did require us to run our hook-up cable across the track, but as that track was only access for one or two holiday lets, that wasn’t a problem.
The location itself was rather nice too, being peaceful outside of farm working hours (and there wasn’t that much disturbance even when machinery was working), and with the highlight being the birdlife. In particular, we had two fledgling wagtails sharing the hardstanding with us (young wagtails don’t half blend in well with a grey stone background), with a parent coming back and forth.
Saturday 30 May
Where was Bertie? He spent another night at Tarland C&CC site at a cost of £27.42
I’d spent half the morning sending out Personalised TGOC26 All-Routes Images, then another chunk of time contemplating the big question: to take the shortest route to Newtonmore via the unbagged Marilyns that lay in our way, or to go and do a 50-mile loop to take in some not-in-our-way hills. The main argument for the latter was that its unlikely we’ll be this close again, so it made sense to do a smaller detour now rather than a bigger detour when we go up to Elgin next year. The deal was sealed by the fact that the weather forecast wasn’t great, and the not-in-our-way hills were smaller than the in-our-way ones.
With that planned, we might have gone straight off to the first hill on the list, but I suggested that first we should nip back to Tarland, to make another visit to the café, and to stock up on a few things in the little village store. I then suggested that we could spend another night at the Tarland campsite, deferring more hills until Sunday – and that’s what we decided to do. Yes, this was a plan based almost entirely on wanting another scone!
Today’s Scone of the Day was lemon and poppy seed, and that’s what I had whilst Mick had a full breakfast. On the one hand, if I’d known how long the breakfast would take to arrive, I would have ordered the soup for myself (it had felt a bit early for soup when we arrived at just gone 11am), but on the other hand, the breakfast was so huge that Mick barely noticed the loss when I helped him with bits of it. As for the wait, everything was cooked fresh, and very well, and I reckon they even make their own hash browns.
This is another café on this trip where we would spend a lot of time if it was local to us.
We left, assuring the staff that this really was the last they would be seeing of us (they greeted us with “I thought you were on your way home?” when we walked in this time, I told them that we’d doubled back just because I couldn’t resist another of their scones).
Aside from availing ourselves of the campsite facilities, we did nothing for the rest of the day.
Sunday 31 May
Where’s Bertie? He’s in a car park off the A97 in between Alford and Rhynie.
Weather: Some showers first thing, one of which was violent and prolonged and caught me good and proper as I returned from a hill, then sunny intervals for the rest of the day.
We were away relatively early from the campsite, and I spent the morning visiting two hills. It was early afternoon by the time we pulled into this car park and after lunch I did give thought to going on to another hill, but it didn’t make logistical sense to do that, so we just stayed put. (post blog note: It was several days later that I realised that I had left just one unbagged hill in this entire area, and it was easily reachable by bike from this car park. How annoying!)
The reason for the exitence of this car park has bamboozled us. As far as we could make out it isn’t close to any attraction, and isn’t the start point for any walks. Yet, for some reason the local authority had decided to construct a car park for 20-odd cars, with spaces marked with inset bricks, and with drainage. It has a bit of an abandoned look to it, but it suits our purposes nicely.
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