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.
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