free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
I uploaded my photos soon after this walk but forgot to finish it and then events overtook me meaning I lost heart for doing anything as normal as a walk report. Added to that it's a bit tender writing up this particular one because my mum lived in New Elgin as a child and I told her we'd been through New Elgin on the way there and back. Sadly she's no longer here for me to recount my hill exploits to and I hadn't realised quite how deeply I'd miss her.
My mother aged 6 with her family in New Elgin in 1929
Anyway back to the day we climbed Ben Aigan. The forecast said east was best so we headed for Morayshire and got blue skies and sunshine all day.
We turned off the A95 at the sign for Ben Aigan but didn't end up in the car park with signs for 'Fluffy Bunny' and 'The Hammer', possibly because the right turn leading to it was covered in sheet ice, so we continued to the left and found a parking area with one car already there so that would do for us too.
Looking back the way we came in
Felled area on the right
Moira has been a fantastic support through the grief of losing a parent. She's been there. She was also so good with my mum, hearing again and again the story of how both our mums were at Boroughmuir School in Edinburgh, not quite in the same year but near enough.
Mum around the time she was in the cast of The Pirates of Penzance (a Boroughmuir School production in the 1930s)
My mum would have enjoyed this walk. She worked for a time for the Forestery Commission and loved trees. She also loved the Moray Firth and she and my dad came to Hopeman for half of their honeymoon (other half was in Plockton). It was a war time romance and each time she said goodbye to her naval officer sweetheart she knew she may not see him again. He narrowly escaped death when his ship was blown up by a German U boat torpedo and two weeks later the ship he should have been on was blown up with no survivors. I believe that sense of life being given back to them helped make my parents into the kind, generous, joyful people they were.
Their engagement in 1946
View towards Keith
Looking back from point we turned off the track to follow a path up the fire break
The path up the fire break is wet in places and sometimes overhanging branches need avoiding. When another fire break crosses it you keep straight on and soon come out on a forestry track where you turn left.
View of flat-topped Ben Aigan from track at top of fire break
First glimpse of the Moray Firth
Shortly after turning left on the track at the top of the fire break we were presented with a choice. We could continue on the wide track which at this point was covered with hard-packed icy snow or we could take a path to the right, running parallel to the track and appearing to head in the right direction. If we had checked the WH blurb we would have known this was a mountain bike trail to be ignored. As it was we walked for about 15 minutes then I became uneasy, checked the directions and realised what we'd done. So we turned round and walked back.
Transmitter mast from mountain bike trail we shouldn't have taken
Once back on the right track we stuck to it, ignoring the mountain bike trail to the left. The icy section was dealt with by donning our microspikes which we should have done earlier. The track led out on to open heathery ground dotted by tiny stunted trees, a reflection of the unforgiving winds up there.
My mum loved to hear about my walks. For the last 25 years of her life she became increasingly crippled by arthritis but she told me about the hills she climbed when she was young. Her best story is of climbing Cairngorm with a girlfriend in the early 1940s and in those days it was a much longer walk than it is now. On the way back the girls saw a car approaching and hopefully stuck out their thumbs. The car slowed down and only then they noticed the royal standard fluttering on the bonnet as a smiling King George VI gave them a royal wave. They didn't get their lift but they were over the moon about the smile and the wave!
My parents' favourite holiday destinations were Switzerland, the English Lake District and the Scottish Highlands - all landscapes of lakes, lochs and mountains - and they returned again and again to their native Highlands.
Up the Jungfrau in Switzerland in 1960
With her early morning catch at Loch Ruthven in 1975
On Skye in 1986
The higher we climbed the more the views opened up until we could see the Moray Firth coastline to the north and rolling Aberdeenshire spread out to the east. Not as dramatic as the west coast but with a beauty of its own.
Towards Huntly
The track leads round the hill then at an obvious junction you take a left turn to climb the final section to the flat summit with the unusually shaped square trig point.
Moira with an unusual shape of trig point
Me with an unusual shape of head
We could see the Spey Bay one way and Ben Rinnes the other but shooting into the sun it's come out as a haze in the photo.
Into the sun towards a faint Ben Rinnes
Walking a bit to the west there is a clear view down into Rothes with its trademark distillery.
Rothes
There was a cold wind on top so we walked back to the path junction to have lunch before retracing our steps back to the car. We had plenty of time so stopped in at Brodie Castle for coffee and cake on the way home. I recalled taking my parents to see the spring flowers there a few years ago when they were still able to go places - a poignant memory now.
Mum would have been astonished to have been woven into one of my walk reports (the hills were really more my dad's passion than my mum's) but she never tired of hearing about where I'd been walking and nothing will replace that.
Mum aged 83 - 8 years ago at her granddaughter's wedding
Part of my mother's legacy is in her 10 grandchildren and 18 great grandchildren and it's one of my aims to introduce some of those small children to the wonders of the Highlands she and my father loved so much.
Three of her great grandsons on top of nearby Ben Rinnes
