Glen Esk

First of all the photos of our hike to Glen Esk during our recent visit to Chez MacKlug. I used to use Picassa for photos and that was coll. But it has become so linked with Google + and everything and is now so user friendly, with so many options for sharing and linking that I find the whole conflation almost unusable. Which is why I posted the previous photos singly. However, today I am pushed for time so I will make this one last attempt at uploading an album. Here the pictures can be found:


https://plus.google.com/photos/103609811127849277427/albums/5780922071509310289

I will also try this . You should be able to find the album at one of these.

At http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/angus/loch-lee.shtml you can find great links, photos and and OS map of what we intended to hike.

The walk was a great and terrible becuase we got completely lost because I claimed I remembered a route from 1988 which was the last time we were in Glen Esk. So we took no map, compass or GPS and relied on memory for the hike. Consequenly we did about 22kms in the afternoon, mostly over very tough terrain which was 'unpathed' and boggy. ANd I know, mea culpa, that this is a dangerous way of approaching the Scottish Highlands even in summer, because although not very high, they are one of Europe's largest expanses of 'wilderness' and the weather systems that sweep across can be sudden, vicious and disorienting.
I was going to add that levels of fitness and good clothing provide us with a suitable defence, but they dont really - we took a risk that we would not have done 99 times out of a hundred and this time we were fortunate. The risks in going off path in the Socttish Highlands are generally exposure through getting lost (its amazing how similar everyhting looks once the mist comes in) but in the terrian we found oursleves in, ankle twists, sprains and break would be the biggest immediate problem.

We talked about this as we hiked and constantly assessed the situation as we walked and we realised through chatting that after we had finished the climb that took us South looking down on Loch Lee we should have just gone straight back down again. We would have been on boring twin track pathway, but it woulld have been the correct thing to do . Instead, if you consult the map ( http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/maps/map1_12af.shtml ), what we did was somewhere on the Burn of Inchgrundle, we headed towards Muckle Cairn instead of Craig Damff. We peaked Muckle Cairn then headed to East Carin, Burnt Hill, Criag of Duone and scrambled back down Glen Effrock before joining back the road and back to the world's ugliest car.

I promised I would discuss the Trump golf course up the coast from Aberdeen. In truth, I cannot face doing this this fine morning as it will put me in a very bad mood.So I will briefly note some other stuff, in relation to some of the events I hinted at in my first post re this Scottish minivacation. First up is that our friends Amelia and Brad, who live near Joe and Anna, and are also know to them, are to have their first baby very soon (within the next two weeks). And it came out, during a fantastic beach picnic with A&B and J&A that Amelia (who is 'due' about one week from now) had been climbing until last week, using a specially designed maternity climbing harness. Of course, having written tales of our derring do in the Scottish Highlands, it should be noted that Brad and Amelia make our adventures look like coach potatoism. Second up is that the phrase "We are all capitalism" (AK 2012) has been voted the best phrase of the year in Large MAnsions Annual Best Phrase of the Year competition. Third is that we are now triple glazing our house in a DIY fashion and the results are amazing. A brief tutorial will probablky be posted at some point.