Newbies in the outdoors - five steps to a trouble-free day

[denfinella]

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Where do you take a couple of friends who never go walking? And how can you persuade them that walking's not all about uphill slogs, rain and hard work?

1. Choose your location carefully

Aberlour, Moray seemed like a sensible choice - a distillery, shortbread factory, riverside and plenty of touristy shops to pick up refreshments. Sell all these features hard... then very briefly drop in the fact that there's a (very short) walk to a waterfall.

2. Cross your fingers for a good weather day

Warm and dry with sunshine and just the odd cloud - perfect! Lie through your teeth that Scotland's always like this.

3. Make sure your friends are suitably inebriated so if anything goes wrong they won't remember it

Aberlour's distillery tour ends with a tasting of six whiskies - just the ticket. We followed that with lunch (the Spey Larder really is excellent), a wander down the riverside and a visit to the shortbread factory.

4. Head off on the walk and hope for the best!

I hadn't spent much time in Aberlour before so really had no idea what to expect. Five minutes on the quiet road out of town and there were already good views back across Speyside.

I then made the slightly embarrassing mistake of taking a wrong turn whilst still on the outskirts of Aberlour. Instead of forking off on the track to the right, we continued up the hill to Fairy Knowe before that nagging feeling turned into realisation. From the mound by the road here there was a good view of Ben Rinnes and a few of its snow patches though, so all was not lost. Back to the track fork and past some lovely gardens.

Soon we emerged at the Ruthrie Burn. The falls are unusually seen from above first, which saves the best view til last. Considering the lack of rainfall for the past week there was still a fair amount of water in the burn. The Linn falls appear to translate roughly to "waterfall waterfall", which seems like an accurate description, if a tad obvious. They are extremely pretty though. If you fancy a grade 5 scramble (ish) you can traverse across to the side of the waterfall on a narrow, intermittent ledge. It's harder on the way back...

Well I'm having a good time anyway

From the top

And the bottom

5. For somebody visiting Scotland, you can't miss out a castle visit

So far, so good then. With our luck holding spirit-wise and weather-wise, a quick drive round the corner led us to Ballindalloch Castle - which turned out to be one of the better castles in the northeast!

A good day was had by all, so Aberlour passes the test with flying colours for a good place to introduce people to the outdoors. Next, I'm thinking either the Black Cuillin, Fisherfields or something similar??

[SAVAGEALICE]

looks a great day ..bonnie photos ..lovely