Countryfile has featured the Slow Ways project, which is trying to link the country up via routes between settlements that people can travel without using motorised transport. This was my second long distance one, my heavy snail pack on my back for the climb over from Clova to the Shieling of Saughs in Glen Lethnot where I planned to camp. Best laid plans and all that.

Husband obligingly dropped me off at the Clova Hotel car park. There is supposed to be public transport at each hub point, but there is no bus up any of the Angus Glens so that had to suffice. Knew what was coming, have climbed up to Loch Brandy many times, but sucked it up, strapped myself into my pack tight against my back and reminded myself that at least it's a good path. I think it's because you're straight into the first of two strenuous climbs, there is no walk in to get you moving first.

Puffed my way up to the lovely Loch Brandy with it's corrie rising up the back, paused to top up on water and prepared myself for the climb up the right side of the corrie to Green Hill. When I got really slammed by the wind, much swearing trying to climb while being near blown off my feet, the wind kept catching my pack and trying to hurl me sideyways. But once Green Hill was reached and I turned right towards the top of Loch Wharral I was on a gently undulating path, the climbs pretty much done, the wind not done with me.

I crossed the deer fence at the top of the Craigs of Loch Wharral, very gingerly, taking my pack off and shoving it across the top bar of the stile. The path down Shank of Catstae to Loch Wharral was clear on my right, but I was turning left. The good news was that all I needed to do was follow the deer fence all the way over White Hill to The Goet. The less good news was the absence of a path for most of the way, but at least it wasn't boggy that day. Peat hags, springy underfoot, alternated with rough grass with a couple of lochans thrown in. Startled a hare which flowed over the ground and sat on a rock at the distance looking at me accusingly. Saw them before on Ben Tirran a few weeks ago patchy coming out of their white winter coats, now this one was all brown.

Glad to see The Goet rise up the gentle hill before me with its rough wall curving around the trig point against the prevailing wind. Wrapped up and ate my lunch looking out over the fabulous view right over to the Sidlaws above Brechin and the sea beyond. Still blowing a hooley. Time to go down and hope for an improvement so I could camp up high for the first time.

Followed the fence down rather than cutting the corner to Black Shank, then the easy 4x4 estate track down to the ford at Shieling of Saughs, boots and socks off to paddle over and refil my water. Still too windy to comfortably pitch the tent, and was being watched by a ewe and lamb so decided to move on. A whinchat was on the stones by the shieling, it did not seem at all bothered by me and bobbed up and down looking at me curiously while I dried my toes. Then the ever present winding down spring bark of a grouse and spilling song of the skylark.

I was going to camp on the promontary above the bridge going up to Shank of Donald Young but the wind was not letting up, so I gingerly climbed down through the heather, rocks, rough grass and burns to the Water of Saughs and camped up on the bank behind a couple of hummocks on a bed of heather so thick that when I looked in the tent there wasn't much room between the groundsheet and the roof. Made tea on my little Honey Stove and Vargo titanium stove combination and turned in for one of the best night's sleep ever, cosy with intermittent rain pattering on my little shelter.

Like my Glen Doll to Braemar walk the second day was on the level, but a long road ahead of me down to Brechin on roads, first on the estate road to Bridgend, then round the Caterthuns and wiggling my way down to Brechin through back roads and country tracks.

Glen Lethnot was still beautiful as I came down it from its headwaters at Sheiling of Saughs, changing from the wildness of the crags, birches and rowan of the higher slopes to more varied woodlands, tho still lots of heather and bilberry bushes with little blue and yellow flowers woven through. I said hello to three cyclists as they passed me going up and then again when they came back down the glen. I saw lots of lapwings with their peewit cry like a wierd video game, curlew and oystercatchers, and lots of ewes with lambs out on all the slopes.

The Slow Ways route went offroad up the side of Tamhilt at this point but there wasn't a clear path or break in the fence and I wasn't going to walk across through ground nesting birds and lambs, so I kept on keeping on and trudged up past staring cows in pasture down to Tigerton and the Balnamoon estate, where I opted not to walk through a working farm and took the second left through a pair of handsome stone gateposts. No gate tho. I crunched along the gravel past a guy riding a lawnmower before a very handsome house, then swung right onto a tarmaced track through rhododendrons, beech, maple, and a couple of towering redwoods.

Like the whole of Angus Balmanoon had been hit badly by Storm Arwen but this part of the way the fallen trees which had clearly blocked the way had been cleared, huge trunks moved to the sides, root balls ripped up when the trees fell. We (Angus) are really only now beginning to recover, nearly 6 months later. At Glen Doll whole hillsides of forestry pines were wiped out like a great explosion had taken place, trees snapped off partway up like they'd been blasted apart, sobering and devastating in equal measure. My beloved paths up to Mayer and Dreish, Corrie Fee, Capel Mounth, Jock's Road and Bachnagairn all impassable. If you're old enough to remember Mount St Helens' eruption in 1980, Glen Doll looked a lot like that.

The Forestry people have got all of this open now and are working hard to clear the windfall and make the forest both safe and as lovely again as possible, amazing work

Balnamoon was no exception. I should have been able to go straight on where the tarmaced track intersected with a minor road but only a little way in a big trunk was right across the path and I knew the route I'd have to take from here to walk on into Brechin so I called the cavalry who took me to be fed and watered. Have never walked so far before, and in such wind, but I did it and without being unable to walk the next day. Where next feets?