Scotland - Days 6 & 7 (Elgin)

Days 6 and 7 saw us leave Braemar to head north to visit friends, starting in Elgin, where Frank & Hilda not only put us up and put up with us, but Frank also took us for a stroll along the coast from Hopeman to Burghead, complete with a pair of binoculars.

Frank is a knowledgeable man when it comes to birds and he pointed out various sea ducks to us (plus the fulmars which apparently shouldn’t be there at the moment). He was managing to identify some with his naked eye, which I could barely even made out as a dot on the sea – I’m not sure how much of that is indicative of my lack of knowledge of birds, and how much is due to my need to get a new prescription in my glasses!

Anyways, we had a lovely walk, in good weather, out to Burghead* where we did a little circuit of the headland before heading back the way we had come (the way back was in the company of two grumpy old men; Mick and Frank can’t half put the world to rights!). It was 4.75 miles of walking with barely a jot of upness.

After a night with Frank & Hilda (thank you F & H ), we just had a short journey to visit Louise & David and, with a little bit of time in hand, we thought that we would just nip over to Findhorn and take a short wander around the headland there.

It now seems to me that Mick knows half of the population of the area, as out of the first three couples we passed on that stroll, Mick knew two. It was the third, who approached us with the exclamation of “Well, if it isn’t Mick!”, with whom we stood and chatted for quite a long while, until the sun was dipping down and the day getting cold. It was a good and enjoyable reason to curtail a walk, but we still had time for a very small circuit before we headed back to Colin to continue our journey.

As the sun went down, we had to hope that the weather would hold for another day…

(*There would be a photo from the Burghead walk if I hadn’t been stupid and wiped the memory card!)