Last weekend I spent a few days up in Scotland, way up north in the Cairngorms. Steve Black had mentioned a while back that he and Tanya were heading up there this month and invited me along… so I thought ‘what the heck!’

It was a bit of a trek up there – I was making the journey up to Glasgow by train on the Thursday morning to meet up with Steve at lunchtime, and then he was to drive the rest of the way up to where we’d be staying just south of Aviemore. However, as the date got closer, there was news of three major storms hitting the UK – Dudley, Eunice and Franklin – which meant travel was a bit of a nightmare! All the train companies were basically telling people not to travel north on the Wednesday evening until after about 9am on the Thursday, and not at all on the Friday! I managed to get the train from Stockport just after nine to meet up with my connecting train at Preston (which was running), and for a time, all went to plan.

However, when we got to Carlisle, we didn’t move for a while, and then were eventually told that a train had recently fallen onto the overhead cables – the train before us had just managed to get past it, but our train was basically cancelled from that point onwards!

So I then had to stand in a queue to wait 3 hours for coaches to turn up to take the ever-growing group of people to Glasgow! I was the last to get on my particular coach, which meant I had no choice of where to sit, and of course that meant I had to sit next to a guy who was so large that he basically took up half of my seat as well as his own, so I was having to perch on the edge of it! Not ideal for a two hour journey, and not helped by the fact the guy was chain-drinking bottles of lager!

I was supposed to meet Steve at 1pm, but I eventually got into Glasgow at five o’clock. I found Steve parked nearby and we started the 125 mile journey up to Kincraig in the Highlands. When we got there, we unloaded our bags before going into Aviemore for a much needed meal at the Cairngorms Hotel. Weather-wise, it was pretty cold and icy, but there was no sign yet of the snow that had been forecast.

When I woke the next morning, the snow had arrived with a vengeance! Steve was hoping that the roads would have been gritted or cleared, so we headed out in the car with Steve’s dog Liza to go for a snowy walk. It actually turned out that apart from the main road going through Aviemore, none of the roads had been treated at all, so it was an interesting drive towards Glenmore. We eventually parked up at Allt Ban, and the snow was coming down really heavily, but everywhere looked amazing! We started our walk alongside a stony river, before following a forest path towards An Lochan Uaine, the Green Loch.

It was a decent walk – we did just under 5 miles in two and a half hours, but was a bit of a slog sometimes walking through the blizzard and the snow on the ground, and it was also very cold! My hat and gloves were quite wet by the time we got back to the car so I was pleased to be able to take them off! We then had some lunch at The Barn at Rothiemurchus, before heading back to the centre at about 3.30pm where we chilled for a bit. We then went for an early-ish meal at a nice restaurant called The Winking Owl, knowing that Tanya and her friend Alison were arriving from Glasgow around 8 o’clock, and we wanted to be back for them.

The centre we were staying at had two sections – a bungalow, where we were staying (mainly because Liza was allowed in there!), and then the other part has multiple bunk rooms and a large self-catering kitchen. A group of Steve’s friends from Northern Ireland had been staying in the other part all week, so that evening we hung out with them and their kids, playing various games which was pretty fun!

Next morning, it had stopped snowing, but there was still a lot of it around! We went and had coffee at the Old Post Office Cafe Gallery down in the village. It was a beautiful day, with amazing blue skies, but it still pretty cold when outside!

After we were fuelled-up on coffee, we took a slightly precarious drive over some some snowy back roads to Loch an Eilein.

The scenery was absolutely stunning – there’d been some great views the day before, but with it snowing, visibility was a bit more limited, however now the skies were so clear the views of the mountains round about were amazing. We walked for nearly 4.5 miles around the whole loch, and to be honest I did feel quite tired after doing this one!

Afterwards, we had lunch at the Barn again, then drove up to the Cairngorm mountain itself, and up to the ski centre at the top. It was pretty busy up there – obviously people had taken advantage of there being lots of snow on a weekend, so had made the trip up to be able to get some decent skiing in. I decided walk around and take some photos of the views whilst the others went to the cafe to keep warm!

That evening we went to really nice pub in Aviemore to eat – The Old Bridge Inn. I had an amazing piece of pork belly with a bottle of Brewdog Nanny State, which I really liked the taste of! Might have to try and locate some of that in Manchester!

The next morning, we had to leave the centre by 10am, so we packed up, grabbed a quick breakfast and got on the roud, stopping briefly at Ruthven Barracks so I could take a couple of final photos! On the way back down to Glasgow we stopped at the House of Bruar, which is kind of like a posh services / shopping outlet! We spent a couple of hours there whilst Tanya and Alison did a bit of clothes shopping (I looked around the gift shop, but everything was pretty expensive!) We had lunch there so I though I’d go for an amazing beef carvery lunch since it was Sunday!

We finally got back to Glasgow about 3.30pm, and I checked into my Travelodge. Then in the evening, I went over to Steve and Tanya’s house along with Alison for some tea. The next day, after meeting with Steve for breakfast in a cafe near to the station, I started my journey back to Stockport – but because of staffing issues, the train was delayed by 45 mins, meaning I missed my connection at Preston. So I had to wait around for a bit for another train, and eventually got home just after 4pm, an hour and 20 minutes later than I should have done. One advantage though is I get full refund on my train tickets for the entire trip!

Also, the weekend before my Scotland trip, I went to see Milton Jones at The Lowry with his show ‘Milton:Impossible’. It’d been postponed many times over the last 2 years due to Covid, but I finally got to see it and it was worth the wait! I’ve seen him a couple of times before, and as expected he was really funny, and it was great to see the main Lowry theatre totally packed out!