At the end of February I turned 36. I’m not a huge one for celebrating birthdays, but I asked for one thing this year. To be taken on a little day out where I had to plan absolutely nothing. I didn’t want to know where we were going, what needed to be packed, nothing. I wanted to be an empty headed passenger princess.
As someone who is the designated organiser, this was an absolute dream.
We jumped in the car and drove the snow roads through the Cairngorms, stopping to take a few photos along the way (the two at the very end of this post). I always think it’s a bit of a cliche Scotland image to take a photo of a passing place sign but to my defence, the backdrop was very nice and the light was hitting it just right and it’s actually a wind warning sign so it’s ok.
A backpack full of snacks and rolls of film, I was told to follow a gravel footpath that went past a wooden cabin and a stone outbuilding, heading towards the loch.
Coming from the micro climate of freakishly warm, calm weather in Moray to the chilly, breezy weather in the mountains was a bit of a shock to the system on the first section of the walk, but after getting to the destination (a holiday lodge owned by the royal family, with a stone bothy at the rear) the sun was out in time for the walk back and we were sweating.
The bothy itself is just an outbuilding of the main lodge, tucked away behind it. You probably wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know it was there. I did want to have a look inside but there were a couple of funny-guys having a picnic in there, shouting ‘BOO’ at us when we peeked through the window. Safe to say I thought the place was haunted for a second.
We plonked ourselves a little further up by the river for our own lunch spot, sitting in piles of pine needles while Fox played with branches and begged for bits of our sandwiches.
A pretty good way to spend a birthday.
“ Glas-allt-Shiel is a lodge on the Balmoral Estate by the shore of Loch Muick in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. In its present form it was built in 1868 by Queen Victoria, who called it Glassalt, to be what she called her "widow's house" where she could escape from the world following the death of her husband Albert, Prince Consort of the United Kingdom. It is now a category B listed building owned personally by Charles III. Adam Watson considered that "Glas-allt-Shiel has undoubtedly one of the most spectacular situations of any lodge in the Highlands.” - Wikipedia
