Scotland - Day 8 (Dallas Dhu and the Findhorn)

What had started as a suggestion of a walk sometime whilst we were up in the area had grown into an offer of dinner and an offer of a nice flat driveway on which we could park Colin for the night, and so it was that we spent an excellent evening on Saturday eating, drinking and chatting with Louise & David until, with midnight upon us, off we toddled back to Colin.

Louise had made a number of suggestions as to where we could walk on Sunday and the option that she picked was a circuit starting from Dallas Dhu distillery.

We were a little behind ourselves in setting out, as by the time we had completed the obligatory faff around the car boot, it was 10.45, against an intended 10am start. Louise blames that on the chatting in her kitchen before we hit the road, but there was also the delay whilst I borrowed a screwdriver to take one of Colin’s seats apart so that I could retrieve an expensive electronic item that I had dropped down the back (and, incidentally, a DVD, which I had dropped down there on a previous trip)!

With the car-boot faff completed and having established that wherever my hat was, it wasn’t anywhere about my person or in the car, we headed away from the distillery car park. Onto estate tracks we went and past some interesting buildings, including this one which, whilst entirely out of place, would look magnificent if it was taken back to its former glory:

The estate tracks took us into woodland, where Louise managed to pick the correct tracks out of the plethora which existed there, to lead us up to follow the River Findhorn. There were some excellent views down to the river, but none of the photos I took do it justice at all. Mick put himself into something of a perilous position at the top of some cliffs to take this one:

Louise not only planned and led the walk, but she catered for it too. Elevenses had us drooling over the cake that she provided and she was even good enough to give us rolls for lunch which were furtively eaten when we stopped outside a tea room for coffee:

I took this snap of us drinking coffee, but failed to take one of the rest of the attractive courtyard in which the benches were set.

The track we needed after lunch proved a little elusive, until we found it exactly where Louise thought that it was. It led us, after a short while, onto the disused railway line which is the Dava Way, which afforded views to Findhorn Bay and the hills beyond (I now know that the pointy one on the other side of the bay is Morven).

During afternoon tea-break (not to mention some more excellent home-baking provided by Louise, this time in the form of chocolate and ginger flapjack (yum!)), Mick once again proved that he knows half the population of the area when the only person who passed us during that break turned out to be another ex-colleague, who stopped for a wee chattette.

Suitably refuelled by tea and cake, away from the Dava Way we went, back onto estate tracks and past another interesting, but abandoned, building. Strangely, this one doesn’t seem to have an entrance at all:

Barely a hop and a skip later, after a standing stone and an osprey nest, we were back on tracks that we recognised (having formed the outward route).

The legs were feeling verily exercised after 13ish miles of walking with around 1500’ of ascent. My considered opinion is that Louise had planned the perfect walk, with views, a river, more views, interesting buildings, lovely woodland, a cafe half-way and, most importantly, a good supply of home-made cake.