Postscript from Banchory

Rain prevailed for the last two days. I spent the time cosy and warm in the caravan reading The Black Echo by Michael Connelly and The Fatherland by Richard Harris.

Needing more to read I downloaded a free Kindle app to my iPhone and downloaded another Michael Connelly: The Black Ice. The going price for these paperbacks is £7.99 and the download is only £3.99. I find reading on the iPhone is a good experience. This comes into its own at breakfast time eradicating the problems of manipulating a paperback and keeping it open at the right page whilst eating toast and marmalade.  Any smears of marmalade can easily be wiped from the iPhone, but not satisfactorily from the paperback  - yes I am a messy eater.

I earlier referred to my attempt at photography with the iPhone on the summit of Morvern, only to produce a brief, impromptu video of "my trousers being ripped in the wind like Bhuddist prayer flags". At the risk of anticlimax I have  mastered putting a video onto YouTube and creating the link here.  Hopefully, if you highlight the whole lot and right click you will be able to "open URL" or something similar and go to the video on youTube - don't get too excited.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lHP7Uvcb9o&feature=youtube_gdata_player

From Banchory 5

Here are some pics from my walk up The Fungle yesterday.
The col I walked to is centre of the first pic.





This one is on the track nearing the col.




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From Banchory 4

Wednesday 20th October

A glorious Autumn day but very cold. I drove to Ballochan at the end of a single track road with coverings of snow here and there. It had snowed during the night and I had to clear the windscreen on the car before setting off, and my water containers were partly frozen.

I walked up an old Scottish drover's road called The Fungle which goes from Aboyne south to Glen Esk; I joined it about halfway and walked to a high col and from there ascended Tampie (723m). I returned by the same route. Much of the track was covered with snow showing quite a variety of animal and bird tracks.

I am writing this the following morning (Thursday) sat in the caravan watching the rain and reading The Fatherland by Robert Harris. It doesn't look like I'm going anywhere today.
Sent from my iPhone


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From Banchory 3

Monday 18th October

I ticked off Morvern today north of Ballater - another Corbett. I had good weather and good views. It was just like Munroing again. I met a chap coming up as I was coming down. He said he was a professional photographer and was taking photos of proposed windfarm sites for an agency in Glasgow. I asked if these were for the use of protestors against windfarms and he said that the agency would supply photos to both sides. For somebody with a conscience and a strong view either way on this form of alternative energy this assignment would provide an interesting dilemma.

Tuesday 19th October

A bit of an epic today. Weather was poor first thing but I set off and drove to do Brown Cow Hill north of Ballater - another Corbett. When I arrived it was sleeting and then it stopped so I set off. A Land Rover track goes right up to a high col. Next there is a two kilometre pathless trog across really serious peat hags. It started snowing and visibility was down to about a hundred yards. I plodded on and eventually arrived at the first cairn. The true summit is another kilometre on the ridge, albeit only another six meters in height. By now snow was coming horizontally and visibility was down to just a few yards. I could not see my gps or my compass properly due to a combination of wind, snow and my spectacles. I turned round and went back with difficulty trying to walk on a bearing across the peat gags. When I at last got back to the Land Rover track the snow stopped and I had proper visibility again, but it was a miserable walk out. There was a cafe a few hundred yards down the road from where I parked. When i arrived another violent snow storm came from nowhere and I had to make a brave dash from car to cafe.




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From Banchory 2

Yesterday (Sunday) I climbed a minor hill south of Banchory - Kerloch (534m).There had been a frost overnight and it was bitterly cold and windy when I started walking at 9:50. I had good views from the top looking across to Clachnaben and the route I had done the day before.

Today (Monday) I did Morvern (871m) north of Ballater. This is not far off Munro height and it is a Corbett which has now set my mind going about the Corbett list. I was given the SMC Corbett Guide last Christmas. I know I am never going to do them all but it would be a good focus for continued Scottish hill climbing- I'll have to look at the list and see how many I have done already!

I attempted to take a photo with the Phone on the summit; it was violently windy and I could see nothing in the screen viewfinder to take the pic. I hate these screen viewfinders. My Cannon Shureshot has the old-fashioned one as well which is much better. On getting back to the car I found that the iPhone had been switched to video and I had captured thirty interesting seconds of my legs and feet with trouser legs being ripped in the wind like Bhuddist prayers flags.
Sent from my iPhone

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From Banchory - Saturday

From Banchory
Saturday 16th October

Today I ascended Mount Shade (507m) and Clachnaben (589m). Clachnaben has a substantial granite tor on its summit which I clambered up on greasy wet rock


at great peril.

I met various people and then returned by Hill of Edendocher and the small bothy at Charr. It started to rain five minutes before I got to the bothy. There was already a couple in situ, who although only out for the day, had a stove and were brewing up. I had some coffee left. We had some pleasant chat, and then I was on my way again now in sunshine. This was a pleasant round and about eleven miles with about two thousand eight hundred feet of ascent. All the people I met were Scottish.

The pic is distant Clachnaben.

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Another book and Escape to Scotland

Book fever continues. I am now working on a book for my 2005 GR5 walk from Lake Geneva to Menton on the Mediterranean. Yes, I know the GR5 finishes at Nice but I elected to take the rewarding alternative finish through the Mercantour Alps. 

Unfortunately I naively  transferred the photos into Powerpoint and deleted the original jpegs. At the time I did not understand that Powerpoint files  are unusable in most other applications (although they do open in Keynote on my iMac). I have been able to re-save the photos from Powerpoint as jpegs, but this causes loss of quality which I will have to put up with. A further problem is that these photos retain the black background used by Powerpoint slideshow, entailing the cropping of more than 200 photos which took most of yesterday. One advantage was that I was able to crop these photos in the normal way to their best advantage at the same time.

Here are some samples: I am still having some problem with black background but have just spent twenty minutes in Photoshop finding out how to sort it - the middle one here was the guinea pig, but it now seems to have lost the r/hand blog frame. 


                                    

Before anything else crops up to prevent me getting back to the hills I have booked onto the Caravan Club site at Banchory (inland from Aberdeen) for eight nights from Friday 15th October. Now that I am not pursuing Munros I am looking forward to exploring other hills. I bought the SMC Cairngorms guide and intend to investigate the hills in the Mount Keen, Glen Esk, and Lower Deeside areas. Hopefully I will be able to post from my iPhone, Vodafone and deer stalking permitting.