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Dr Frank and I had long planned to go to the NW Highlands towards the end of February, and, a week out from D-day, the weather looked reasonably auspicious, notwithstanding the impending North Atlantic storms – some snow, cold and quite windy, but not too windy for walking. However, the forecast seemed to get worse daily, and in the end we decided that it would be best to go east, where the forecast was somewhat better. The upshot of this was that we ended up staying in Ballater, with the idea of walking up and in the area of Lochnagar.
Unfortunately, by the evening before our first outing, the forecast had deteriorated to such an extent – heavy snow all day, white-out conditions, howling gale …
- that we decided that, rather than waste time and effort battling through seriously sub-optimal conditions, we’d go for a low level walk; and after a bit of searching, found what looked like it would be at least a reasonable walk - around Loch Kinord, just down the road from Ballater (the forecast for the following day was much better, so we still had hopes of getting up Lochnagar).
So that’s what we did.
The following pics just give an indication of conditions.
At the start it was snowing very heavily, but it did ease off a bit during the course of the morning.
Snowmen and snowballs in the car park, about a quarter of the way round.
As we walked up the hill into the wood we encountered a sign saying that the path was closed because there hadn't been time to clear the fallen trees. To which we decided to pay no heed.
Initially there was just the odd flattened tree - though on the necessary detour off the path the get around one of them, I managed to put my foot into a deep boggy hole; and by the time I'd managed to extricate myself (I was submerged up to my knee) my foot was soaking and pretty darned cold!.
However, a few hundred metres from the point at which the path briefly meets the road, there were suddenly fallen trees everywhere, and though none of the detours was especially demanding, the cumulative effect of all of them on our rate of progress was considerable!
The last few kilometres is a pleasant walk on a broad path around the east side of the loch. So far there had been virtually no wind, but at this point quite a breeze - a cold one - began to get up.
Since we were only a few miles from Ballater, and it was cold and a tad windy, we determined to go back to our house and eat our lunch there. Real fair weather walkers!!!
