Monday, 3rd June. I spent my final morning at Avielochan, on my way to Inverness Airport. The Grant Arms Hotel, where I had been staying for the four previous nights, has a hide there for the exclusive use of its guests, and indeed ask you that if the little car park already has its capacity of five cars to come back later. I was fortunate in that I was the only person in the hide for the full 90 minutes I was there.
I was fortunate also to have shelter – it was drizzling when I arrived, and for nearly all the time I was there. This was the general view from near the hide as I arrived.
Avielochan was another place where there was to be the chance of seeing Slavonian grebes, though, sadly, again they were not in evidence. But I enjoyed my morning, obsserving a variety of more common birds, some of which are featured below. For a short while, not long enough to get my camera to it, I caught sight of an osprey flying around against the background of the hills opposite.
Greylag geese were in abundance.So were gulls of various kinds.Hmm, there was a lapwing on the bank a few seconds ago.Young ducklings – goldeneye I think.Female GoldeneyeGreat black-backed gull taking offWillow warbler (?) in nearby tree Greylag geese in parallel formationAbout turn!
And I couldn’t resist taking this little video of the three adults and goodness-knows-how-many goslings.MallardThe greylag goose is all ready to start conducting the piece, but the choir is not watching. Heads in copies as usual.Goldeneye taking off …… in flight …and landing.Gulls enjoying the wind. I’m glad someone was.
There was short path beyond the hide, but I didn’t say long. By now I was perishingly cold, even though the rain had temporarily stopped.
And in the event, this was all I saw of the Slavonian grebes.
Despite the weather, and despite the underlying sadness over the very recent loss of my lovely Lulu, I did enjoy my short stay in the Cairngorms National Park. The hotel was a friendly, welcoming place and made me feel very comfortable and looked-after, which I’m sure helped my general satisfaction at the mini-holiday. But I was happy to get home to Bella in the early evening. I feel pretty sure I shall return to Grantown-on-Spey before too long.
Saturday 1st June. A day spent in Glenmore Forest Park, in the middle of the Cairngorms National Park. The morning was spent with the reindeer herd. This involved being led, (with 49 others) on a 15-minute walk, just a little steep at times, above the treeline, there to find a group of males kept during the summer months, within an enclosure of some 1200 acres, while they grow their antlers. The females and calves had dispersed a few weeks previously to roam the 10,000 acres available to them. The total herd is kept, by managed breeding, to 150, new bloodstock being introduced from Sweden from time to time.
We learned that a Saami (formerly known as Lapp), named Mickel Utsi, was visiting the Cairngorms in 1949 and realised that the conditions, (sub-arctic altitude, ground, lichens), were absolutely ideal for keeping reindeer, which are domesticated caribou. Indeed reindeer are a UK native species, but went extinct here about a thousand years ago. With his wife, Dr Ethel Lindgren, Utsi brought the first reindeer from Sweden to the Cairngorms in 1952. In due course, the Forestry Commission granted them the right to use the current land to keep reindeer. By the late 1960s the hill trip for tourists was well established, having been by appointment only up to that point.
Despite being in a group, or perhaps because of it, I was able to stop and take some pictures on the way up.
At the bottom right of the preceding picture is part of a boulder, with faintly engraved on it, ‘Utsi Bridge’.
Beginning to leave trees behind.
We come to a fence and see a boardwalk we will take, with the reindeer lying down by another fence.
Seen with camera much zoomedBut as we start along the boardwalk, the reindeer move to join us. In total we all went through the gates of three fences. Fortunately we had been told in advance that the deer would walk with us, across us, and alongside us. I turned round and saw thisturned back and saw this,looked ahead and saw a procession of reindeer and people ahead of me.Despite the fact that they know what is in the green bag, they are patient while we listen to the next instalment in the story.But when another green bag is rattled, they home inon their huge, spreading feet. (Very useful in snow.)They are moulting quite heavily now. Indeed, I learnt later that last Sunday was called ‘Scruffy Sunday’.
We each had one or more chances to feed the reindeer. A two-handed technique was necessary to begin with, but when I had just a little left, I was able to use my right hand to take this picture. Their teeth are flat and very ground down by tearing up lichen. This poor deer’s had his head elongated by the camera!
Lichen techniqueGentle creatures, enjoy a scratch, but we are warned to touch neither head not antlers, which will be taken as aggressive..
We made our way back down in our own time, when we wanted.
From Utsi BridgeI was pleased to meet this woman and her golden retriever, Elsie (who was expecting her first puppies very shortly) near to the end of the walk. She had something to do with the herd, and was able to tell me how Utsi’s widow had taken on Alan Smith to manage the herd in the early 1980s, how a summer volunteer had shortly afterwards become Mrs Smith and how together they bought the herd on Ethel Lindgren’s death a few years later.
I had some soup at the Glenmore Visitor Centre, and then looked at a plan of the various waymarked walks. I decided to do the longest, 3.5miles/5.8 km, starting from there. It was marked ‘strenuous’, which I would normally have avoided, but the shorter ones, all marked ‘moderate’ looked really so easy that I decided to risk the more demanding one. To begin with the path sloped gently upwards, and was wide and gravelly. The route, from the contour lines, appeared to continue to climb gradually and then steeply toward the end of the outward leg, culminating at a loch.
Looking over right,zooming in with the camera, zooming in further, and confirming with my binoculars that the white dots in the middle are indeed reindeer. The path is the boardwalk.Looking left, and still on a broad, gently sloping path. What is strenuous about this?The broad path has now gone, and the contour lines are closer I am glad that I have a walking pole with me, for the sake of balance.Oh. Nice to have the Escher-looking boards to walk on over the boggy bits, but they are not meant to to be going down, please. This suggests there is going to be some climbing on the leg the other side of the glen, back to the start, where I had hoped it would be a gentle stroll downwards. (I much later realised that I had not noticed the heights marked elsewhere on the contour lines.)Oh. Even steeper now, and I’m extra glad I have a walking pole with me. I allow some human mountain goats rush by me, on legs much more confident than and half the age of mine.Arrived after much more descent at An Lochan Uaine (The Green Loch)And again in the dusk of evening I shall find once more alone The dark water of the green loch. And the pass beyond Ryvoan.
After a brief chat with two of the mountain goats who had passed me, who were contemplating continuing along to Ryvoan Bothy, and a nibble of a date flapjack, I continued on the waymarked walk, and was relieved to find that it was an easy path along a contour.
I was intrigued to notice this.
At first it reminded me of the mud volcanoes I had seen in Yellowstone last year. Then I thought it resembled a fountain. Then I realised it was a spring – and understood why in French the words for ‘spring’ and ‘fountain’ are the same, ‘fontaine’.
These four passed and fell behind me several times on my homewards stroll. I learned in due course that the 20-year-old grey was being used to train the 8-year-old piebald not to be afraid of the narrow drains which crossed the path at regular intervals.
The reindeer booking office/shop was just before the visitor centre car park, so I called into the paddock where those unable for various reasons to do the hill walk could go and see four reindeer, each kept there for just two or three weeks on a rotating basis. It was interesting to learn more about the creatures from the many information boards there.
I had once stood beside a model of a megaloceros in a French museum, an impressive experience! (And I don’t remember the moose in Yellowstone being so big.)
Finally, I had seen very few birds on my walk, though the loud and joyful sound of them up in the trees had accompanied me all the way. So I was pleased to see on a feeder several instances of one of my favourite small birds, the siskin. This has not graced my garden for a couple of years now, presumably because climate change means it does not now have to come so far south in the winter.
I was right to take the ‘strenuous’ walk. It was, I would say, not so much strenuous as a bit difficult at times. And, despite the grey colour of the sky, and the chill up there with the reindeer, the weather was OK. It didn’t rain all day!
Thursday, 30th May. It would have been nearly three months since my trip to southern Africa, so a few weeks ago I fixed a short, four-night break in this small town in Morayshire, on the northern edge of the Cairngorms. In the event, just a few days after burying my lovely cat, Lulu, killed on a country lane near to where I live, this was not the best of times to leave poor Bella behind, not was I really in the right mood to explore this new, for me, part of Scotland. But all was booked – flight, hire car, hotel – so I left home, hoping my sadness and guilt would not intrude too much.
The weather forecast for the five days was not great, but the worst was meant to be as I arrived, gradually improving over the period. So it was pleasing that, when I picked up the car (I’d booked and paid for the tiniest car possible, and they gave me a 2019 Astra with just 1350 miles on the clock) at Inverness Airport around midday, it was not actually raining, though there was a bitter wind. The hotel – more later – had sent me a load of information, so I had already made my plans for the afternoon. While waiting for the car, I had bought a sandwich, and drove along the Moray Firth to Nairn, when I parked by the small harbour and ate my lunch, looking at the northern side of the Firth through the windscreen. In the distance is a red ship, at, I think, the neck of the Cromarty Firth. It didn’t move all the time I was there.
Well wrapped up against the biting wind, I wandered around for a few minutes.
This is a fishwife, who erstwhile played a very important role in the fishing community. The statue was erected as part of the Highland Year of Culture, 2007.Oystercatcher, feathers somewhat ruffled in the windJackdaws always glare, even when their feathers are not being ruffled.
It was pleasing to see this sign on the harbour wall, but why only swans?
In the information from the hotel was a tip that there was a public car park, giving access to the beach, at the end of a road through a campsite, which otherwise I would have assumed to be entirely private. I went over the dunes …
on to the nearly deserted beach, and enjoyed the natural decorations.
I was wondering about the precise sizes of the oystercatcher and the black-headed gull …
… when a herring gull photo-bombed the picture and answered my question.
After a few minutes it started spitting, so, not wanting to get drenched, I set off to make my way back to the car. But it soon stopped, so I was able to take more pictures, of which this is one, looking back to Nairn.
It was now my intention to go to a place described as, ‘A beautifully scenic spot – the ruined Lochindorb Castle lies in the middle of Lochindorb, surrounded by heather-clad moorland and scattered woodland.’ Followed by a long list of birds which might be seen there and thereabouts. But well before I got there it was teeming with rain. I got out to take a couple of pictures on my way.
Approaching the loch I stopped to take this picture of the ruined castle.
And was delighted when a mother and six offspring ran across the road in front of my car. Fortunately I lunged for my camera. Had I not, but just driven on, one, then another, further offspring might well have been crushed. I managed to get this picture with all nine safely reunited.
Proving this was wonderful weather for ducks
I drove on, scarcely stopping anymore. There was no point with the rain lashing down. I just got this picture of the increasingly mountainous scenery.
I was pleased to arrive at the Grant Arms Hotel, in Grantown-on-Spey (pronounced ‘Granton’).
I had chosen it because it advertises itself as a wildlife hotel. It had already sent me a great deal of information, as I have said. As a guest you become a member of its ‘Bird Watching and Wildlife Club’. There is a library, masses more information about walks and suggested outings, and real live human experts on hand twice a day for tips and information, plus a few guided walks from the hotel, and evening talks about twice a week. They also have celebrity-led weeks from time to time.
The hotel itself is comfortable, traditional in furnishings, serving excellent food, and for me was very good value for money, as they charge per person not per room. I felt very well looked after.
Queen Victoria stayed there, incognito I read elsewhere.
Not incognito, and some time ago, another royal couple stayed there…
There was just one talk during my stay there, and it was that first evening. It was on Yellowstone National Park in the Fall. It was very interesting to make comparisons with my own stay there in the snow of February last year.
