TGOC Day 13 - Leachie Hill to Stonehaven

Wednesday 23 May (0730-1045)
Distance: 9.5 miles
Weather: wall to wall sunshine (and hot enough to be wandering around in a t-shirt and pants at 6am!)

It was a very warm night again with a bit of a disturbance at 2am. I woke to hear what I first thought was a deer grazing just to the side of the tent. Sitting up to peer outside disturbed Mick and he could clearly hear it too.

We thought that unzipping the mesh to stick a head out would scare it away, yet the noise continued and there was no deer to be seen - or any other animal for that matter.

We lay back down, but on went the noise and I became convinced that it must be a rodent chewing at my bag. Door unzipped again, my bag was inspected, with no hint of any chewing. But on went the noise.

We did eventually find the source and you really wouldn't have thought that a family of big black beetles (Beetles Of Unusual Size, I'd say) could make so much noise!

With a few more hours of kip had, up we sprang for our final walk in to Stonehaven. It wasn't just a matter of dropping down the hill to the road, as I had opted to take us along the edge of the forest for a while first to avoid too much tarmac.

A bit of a heather bash saw us onto easier terrain and even with a couple of tricky fence crossings it was a pleasant walk, keeping us up high enough to enjoy the hazy views.

Finally we did have to drop down to the road for the final walk in.

I can't say that we saw an awful lot of Stonehaven, although we liked what we did see. Having made a bee-line for the sea and taken the obligatory finish photos (pity we forgot to take any start photos!), we thought we'd find out the bus times to Montrose, and having arrived at the bus stop at the same time as the fast bus to Montrose, on we got.

So, a third TGOC complete and we've had such a good time. I might just write a separate post about our reflections on the trip.

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