The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Monday 11 February 2013

Scotland – Day 1 (Braemar)

After a busy week, our long drive and a late night, we weren’t feeling inclined to leap out of bed at the crack of sparrow’s on Sunday morning. In fact, we were still lounging around, just contemplating a third cup of tea in bed, when a text came through from Martin inviting us for a walk up Morrone half an hour hence. There was no chance that we could possibly get ourselves up, breakfasted and ready in that time frame, so another cup of tea was duly had.

Finally, at gone noon we did drag ourselves out, first to go and look at the selection of Paramo jackets available from Braemar Mountain Sports, and then to go for a little bit of a wander.

Our wanderings took us in the direction of Morrone and up seemed like as good a direction as any to head. I’m sure that the people we passed on the final stage of their descents wondered about our sanity in only just heading up at that time of day, but we were happy to just get as far as we fancied; the top was not necessarily our objective.

Now I should, perhaps, mention that it was a bit snowy. Not just underfoot, but from the sky too. Not only that, but it was a bit breezy. We were certainly glad that, in the final ten minutes before we left home on Saturday, I’d dashed up into the loft to find our goggles; they not only kept the snow out of our eyes, but they kept our faces quite warm in the biting wind!

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Just before we entered the cloud base, we concluded that the weather wasn’t going to get any better, the day wasn’t going to get any younger and that our legs had been sufficiently stretched for the first day of our holiday. An about-turn was made and back down we went.

4.4 miles were walked, with 1200 feet of ascent.

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