Loch Muick

Today we went to Glen Muick to have a nice walk around Loch Muick. The scenery is absolutely stunning, and the walk around the loch is about 8 miles in total, so we felt the kids (and Grandma Kathy) could all manage that. Much of the path is a landrover track, and as such is nearly a proper road, but there is about a mile on the far side of the loch where the path becomes a narrow, rocky trail along the mountainside. It’s still quite a good path, and is relatively flat – only a few places where the climb is steep enough to notice – mostly it’s quite gradual - but it was single file and did require careful foot placement. Olivia took to it like a fish to water – she’s obviously part gazelle. I followed behind her and tried to keep up (though I forced her to slow a little from what would have been her natural pace – not worried so much about falling down the hillside as about twisting an ankle). We ended up about 10 minutes ahead of the others – of course, they were working at Alex’s pace, and as he has small legs, it was much tougher for him to avoid puddles and climb over rocks. He enjoyed it, though, which is good.



The kids were relatively whinge-free about the whole thing. Sarah, who is getting to be more like a teenager each day, did complain quite a few times at the start about walking being almost as boring as castles and so on, though once we got onto the narrow path, she was very happy. Olivia, bless her, didn’t complain at all and I think would quite happily have walked longer and more steeply uphill. Which is quite funny, as she is the one who, as a smaller child, never wanted to walk anywhere and would have stayed in the pushchair for at least a year beyond when I started making her walk. I can remember carrying her all the way up Juniper Top once, as she was such a reluctant walker. The usual scads of photos can be found over here...

After the walk, we stopped into Ballater, one of the larger towns in the area, which looks a lovely town with some nice shops – it’s quite close to Balmoral, and obviously benefits from the royal association. We are planning to visit Balmoral one of the days we are here – seems silly not to - so I’m sure we’ll be back in Ballater that day. Balmoral is open until the end of July, so presumably, the Queen comes up in August... Actually, Loch Muick is on the Balmoral Estate, which extends quite a ways beyond the immediate environs of Balmoral – not sure precisely how far beyond without a map.



Once back at the cottage, the kids proceeded to build a stylised model of the Loch and the walk we took, featuring actual sand, stones, heather, etc they gathered during their walk. There was even a working waterfall...