#Loch Beinn a' Mheadhoin

[bluesman56]

Scottish Highlands by Tony

[scotianostra]

Good Morning from Scotland 

Loch Beinn a' Mheadhoin Sunrise by Iain MacDiarmid Via Flickr: Another shot from yesterday's early morning trip to Glen Affric. This shot was taken about 5 minutes before sunrise.

[patoftheshire]

[surrealscotland]

The framing only adds to the picture 😁💯 Follow @scotlandissurreal for more 🤍💙 Follow @scotlandissurreal 😇🙏 Glen Affric is a glen south-west of the village of Cannich in the Highlands. The River Affric runs along its length, passing through Loch Affric and Loch Beinn a' Mheadhoin 😎🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 📷 Awesome capture by @_kul.an_ 📸🙏 ❗The best fans make sure to give the original post some love as well 😊🦕❗ (at Glen Affric) https://www.instagram.com/p/CcBX9QrDN7b/?utm_medium=tumblr

[fotokrak]

Jeszcze wrócimy na Beinn Mheadhoin , ale puki co czas zejść kilkaset metrów stromymi zejściami do kotliny z pięknym jeziorem z krystaliczna wodą. Co ciekawe jest tu też kawałek piaszczytej plaży, są też amatorzy kąpieli. (w: Loch Avon, Cairngorm, Scotland) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQrYtnSHb1m/?utm_medium=tumblr

[msmarlenemckinnon]

Into the woods || Mar & Charlie

One would think that being as many as they were, family vacations would be chaotic but it wasn’t always. This summer they went camping to Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin, there was a nice lake and plenty of forest to go hiking. All the McKinnons were very active, so that sort of holidays were just for them.

She had taken a long swim at the lake around midday and after lunch, her father suggested to go hiking. There was a tray that leaded to some cliffs and it had a lovely view.

It all started okay, but that just lasted for a couple of mies until she lost sight of her father and some of her brothers. Marlene stopped and frowned untill she spotted a familiar blonde head. “Wait!” She called as she rushed towards her older brother. “Charlie wait! Where’s dad?” She frowned as she slowed down to keep up his pace.

 @muse--minded

[spodzone]

Sgurr na Lapaich by Tim Haynes Via Flickr: Bright pure white snow catching the morning light on the undulating slopes of Sgurr na Lapaich across Loch Beinn a Mheadhoin

[revel-wallpapers]

Loch Beinn a'' Mheadhoin in Glen Affric, Scotland(1366x768)

[hillgoers]

Summer Highlights!

Summer highlights!

As unpredictable summer in Scotland can be, I've been very fortunate not to have postponed any of my planned walks. Only once did I have to change my route plans due to weather and that was with a Bronze DofE group near Rynie! A small burn crossing turned into a fast-flowing river! This of course was an ideal intervention to teach hazards and dynamic risk assessments. The weather is never a barrier though and mostly, for me anyway, it's been a good summer. 

I've had a few DofE groups throughout the summer, volunteering for Banchory, also freelancing for other providers. There's always a story, a drama, a moan and a groan but followed by a sense of achievement as they finish their expedition. These expeditions they'll remember forever, locked in the memory for the good and the bad, mostly for the good. If led correctly the experience will nurture a love and respect for the outdoors. This combined with the other sections of DofE, the participants learn life skills you can't learn in a classroom.

Apart from my own groups qualification, my favourite DofE trip this year was a week over in Arran supervising a gold team. I’d not been to Arran for many years and forgot how stunning it was. Dramatic landscapes and beautiful coastal walks. Walking through Glen Sannox, over to Glen Rosa gives you a intricate view of the ridge walks on the island. I’ll have to go back sometime for a proper look over these.

I’ve continued to run mini introductory hill skills at the Bennachie Visitor Centre and will continue these next year. These give a wee introduction to map reading and navigation. The follow up from this course would be the National Navigation Award Scheme courses, I’ll be running more of these in the next few months too. James in the picture attended a Bennachie session and also achieved the Bronze NNAS award, I’ve no doubt he’ll continue to progress through the stages and soon be better than me!

I’ve also been fortunate to guide some lovely clients (now friends) over the hills this year. The Turriff and District Round Table team continued their quest to find Munro his home. These guys did an excellent job of walking up 17 Munros for local charities, finishing on Ben Nevis last weekend where Munro found his dad… I had great fun walking with those gents. Well done to them!

Another satisfying trip to Glencoe with some repeat clients too.

Painting the Stuic just below Lochnagar summit.

As a family we had some relax time over the school holidays in between my walk, some walking involved obviously… A lovely week with our extended family in Portugal then back to the cooler isle of Harris and Lewis. We also decided to take the leap and get a pooch, Luna will be joining me on the hills next year!

In between clients I've be strolling over the Cairngorms looking for flora and breathtaking views. My wild camp by Loch Etchachan a couple of months ago under the stars, looking north for the aurora, was a special evening. Watching the sun dip her last rays over Beinn Mheadhoin and waking up to the vibrant colours that early morning brings, has to be seen.

As we approach winter please look out for some winter skills training if you intend venturing to the hills in the snow, I can't wait! 

Hillgoers can offer guided winter walks when the snow arrives, low level walks also available.

Contact us for any bespoke walks or training :)

[sophietdbsco]

29 juillet - Loch Ness

Nous avons quitté l’Isle de Skye ce matin pour nous rendre vers l’un des lieux les plus mythiques d’Écosse : le Loch Ness. Nous avons roulé toute la matinée et nous sommes arrivés à Drumnadrochit pour le déjeuner. Après notre pique nique, nous avons visité le centre et musée du Loch Ness, qui présente les arguments et les contre arguments à la présence du monstre Nessie dans le lac, et qui nous laisse nous faire notre avis sur la question. Ensuite, nous avons marché vers les bords du Loch, où nous nous sommes assises sur la jetée pour faire quelques mots croisés, les pieds dans l’eau fraîche.

En fin de journée, nous nous sommes rendues au Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin, près de Cannich, pour que je puisse me baigner. Emilie n’a pas voulu m’accompagner, l’eau était trop froide pour elle.

Nous avons dîner dans un Wetherspoon à Inverness, où nous dormons ce soir, puis nous sommes allées dans un bar où se joue de la musique tous les soirs.

[mygrandvoyage]

Lochs and Glens

Lochs (”lakes” in Gaelic) are ubiquitous in Scotland (over 31,000 of them!) So are waterfalls. Large, small, they are everywhere since it’s always raining!

Scotland accounts for 80% of Britain’s fresh water supply. Well, when they split off, that’s one more commodity to sell the English.

I walked about 10 miles around Loch Affric and Loch Beinn A Mheadhoin. Glen Affric (Glen means “valley”), is stunning, purported to be one of the most beautiful places in Scotland. Best of all, it’s fairly remote, so I barely saw another human for 5 glorious hours!

[bluesman56]

Glen Affric Scottish Highlands by Tony

[scotianostra]

Glen Affric, Cannich, Highland

Rapids on the short length of the River Affric that flows between Loch Affric and Loch Beinn A Mheadhoin, Glen Affric in between showers this afternoon

[patoftheshire]

[sharedstoriescairngorms]

Walking with Nan Shepherd

by Kerri Andrews

It was October in the Cairngorms, and overnight a hoar frost had glazed grass and tree with a smooth, shrouding ice that scattered the tentative early morning sun into shards. Those faster with their boots and bags stood with their hands in their armpits, or jumped up and down whilst others fumbled with their laces, chilled fingers clumsy in the freezing air. Ready at last we set off at a brisk pace, the cold making us eager to be on the move. Overhead the sky was a perfect blue, the colour as sharp as the air. We planned to walk to Derry Lodge, and from there to ascend Derry Cairngorm and Beinn Mheadhoin, ‘the middle hill’, whose Gaelic name recognises the mountain’s position at the centre of the Cairngorms massif even as it belies its considerable steepness. Hidden between the two peaks lay Loch Etchachan, its deep waters nestling snuggly in the tight bowl of Coire Etchachan where it is watched over by some of the highest mountains in Britain. If there is a place that can be considered the heart of the Cairngorms, it is Coire Etchachan, where routes to all points of the compass cross. But even on that perfect autumn day, bright lit by a chilled sun, it was a barren heart made of grey rock that had been sliced by water where it had not been smashed by ice. We fled from it, upwards, eager for a wider, shallower field of vision that did not force us to look deep into the earth, or ourselves. When Nan Shepherd stood on that same spot during a summer eighty years before, her reaction could not have been more different. We were afraid to be exposed to the mountain’s insides, to feel enclosed, perhaps even entombed by the place, but Nan Shepherd found in this confined space a snugness that was both revelatory and comforting. The mountain became, for a time, a fortress, with its ‘soaring barricade’ of ‘towering mountain walls’ enclosing loch, landscape, and woman. Perhaps if I’d have had her words to comfort me, I would have found the courage to enjoy the uncomplicated brutality of the place, but our acquaintance was a year away, and I was afraid. When I next walked the mountains of the Cairngorms it was with Shepherd in mind, and in my rucksack. It was my thirty-fifth birthday, and I had chosen to climb Bynack More as the culmination of the festivities. Like Coire Etchachan it had been, for Shepherd, a place of interiorities, a place where she found she could access the cold elemental heart of the Cairngorms. Lying on the eastern side of the massif above the Lairig an Laoigh, which links Aviemore in the north with Braemar in the south, Bynack More is a prominent mountain with an appealingly rocky summit. But hidden on its north face a hundred metres below the top, beyond a small lip, are its Barns. The largest is a giant erratic, an ‘enormous black cube of rock that lies like a Queen Anne mansion’, Nan Shepherd wrote, though for all its size it is invisible from the mountain summit not half a mile away. Shepherd describes how ‘One can walk up a sort of staircase within and look out by a cleft as though from a window’, rendering them homely with the familiar presence of stairs and windows – and making entering into them seem no harder than climbing to the first floor of a house. But entering into the Barns is no small thing, and quite unlike climbing any domestic staircase I have encountered. I walked to the Barns after reaching the mountain’s summit, eager to see the rock-house she had described and to climb the staircase and to look out of the window as she had done: I would take temporary possession of a grand home made from stone, I thought, and play at being laird of the mountain. What I found was a towering eminence of black rock, all smooth sides and curves like a child’s drawing of a cloud made hardly real, penetrated on the northern side only superficially by a few mossy clefts. The startling, lively green of the vegetation made a pleasing contrast with the dour sheen of the stone beneath, but such colour is only possible in the presence of water: any attempt to climb these slits would result in a potentially lethal slip on the edgeless rock. Only one cleft in the Barns was dry on that cloudless day: a huge schism that, from the south, looked to have cleaved the giant rock almost in two. But even this seemed dangerous to me – whilst the up scramble might have been possible, I had less confidence in my ability to get down again. Less brave than Shepherd, I was forced to enjoy the Barns from the outside, and to take what solace I could from the ‘startling view’ on my return to Bynack More’s magnificently-situated summit cairn, the preserve of ‘Beginners’ and ‘The talking tribe’ who know no better. In the years since I walked Bynack More I have continued to try to understand the pull of the mountain interior that so thrilled and drew Nan Shepherd, but I am no match for her. Instead, it seems I must make do with the mountains’ surfaces: boulders, heather, ski tracks, cotton grass, scree, summit cairn, scattering of sunlight off quartz, ‘tang’ of mountain height. It is enough.

[roadtrip-ecosse]

Nous montons en direction de Drumnadrochit où nous attend Eamon, un écossais pur souche avec un cœur aussi gros que ses mollets. Il nous conseille de camper le long du loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin . Nous y restons pendant 2 nuits et visitons les alentours en Kayak.