Continuing..? 17 10 17 (23) 25 1 21

When I review my pics from the first two trips a big difference which only just occurs to me is the enormous difference in numbers of pics between September 2013 and September 2014, a reflection I thought perhaps more to do with a greater reticence on my part to make so much effort to get to know new people than to do with other reasons?

Of course meeting up with Russell and having his company for a whole day when we ran into other people and engaged them in conversations but compared to being alone one can believe one would be less inclined to take their picture than when one was unaccompanied by a friend such as he. This young guy an Estate Worker the only person I met just outside my bothy on the day I left it 14 9 18...

But in my last blog I mentioned Michelle and her young assistant whom I met in the kitchen of the hostel we were staying at in Braemar and subsequently had a day out with them in a manner of speaking… And then on my walk on the hills above my bothy the day before through the mists on my return I walked against this Land Rover whose occupants had journeyed forth with a view to getting the view of a nearby lochan from the road they were travelling on whilst I was walking on a 20 year map without finding my summit of the hill I sought because the road onto the hill no longer stopped where my map said it should stop: until hat is the driver of Land Rover told me "It's over there!" pointing with his finger into the mists to his right in a south easterly direction when I promptly took a compass bearing in the direction he was pointing to secure my summit after the 250 yards or metres of his guesstimate of the distance it would take. Then a few days later the driver and I bumped into one another for a second time in the town when I was able to thank him once again for being instrumental in my achieving my objective despite my old map and the dense mists…

On still another day I set out early for a hill that was perhaps only 300 metres in height above the road at its highest point with a view to walking first along the road unless I could hitch a lift with a car before departing the road for the hill in question, Carn Aosda, and then walking back along the ridge of the hill down into the town which ran parallel to the road below. Fortunately on that occasion I was able to get a lift from a couple of sheep farmers who were on their way to a market for the purpose of buying sheep. Around that time a ram had been in all the newspapers for having fetched a price running into over £100 000 so valuable was its pedigree reckoned to be… I had left the hostel a little after 9 am and with the lift up to the head of the pass I was able to ascend my hill and get back on foot to the town by around 5 30 pm: without that lift I could have reckoned on another 2 or 3 hours…On my return to the town I did run into a couple of guys on their way up and so took this pic of them after our conversation; 

and then when I came onto the A93 again I ran into a couple by the side of their car he a guy who was in his early seventies who had been a champion flyweight boxer during his military career in the British army and so delighted in regaling me with some of his stories which no doubt his life knew herself by heart she must have heard them so many times…

It is interesting recounting these experiences now some 3 years later for the writing them down sends me back to my pic files to confirm certain aspects of the trip. So for example when I jumped forward to the autumn trip of 2015 a year later I was awash with lots of pics of new people I had met then a year later, leading me to the conclusion that in 2014 I didn’t meet so many new people because the weather was more rainy and because I didn’t see so many people whilst visiting the one bothy, but let us leave it there for now, with a few pics I’ll illustrate this blog with before posting. Have a good day everyone.