"Ages on the hill"

Today, Nature Nuts had a wee wander up the Munro’s of Glenshee with a group of lovely young ladies from Montrose. Earlier on in the year I had taken Moira and her pal Irene to see the Pine Martens. Unfortunately it was one of the few no-shows of the season. However, Moira must have enjoyed my company (don’t know why tbh) as she booked a trip to see our mountain creatures. We all met up in Blair at 0700 and headed up the glen, to say the girls were a bit apprehensive regarding the climb is a bit of an understatement. Anyway, we headed up the glen and viewed multiple stags on the slide then we arrived at the Ski centre and headed up Carn Aosda with a wee spring in our step, actually it was more of a slip of the heels. Underfoot was a bit dubious with melted snow which had frozen then melted again. I will say this though, the girls were adamant they were going to get to the top and I tip my hat off to them. As far as I know it was only Moira that had been up a Munro before and she had hated the climb lol. Irene and Stevie hadn’t ventured to the dizzy heights of a Munro and were a bit sceptical about the whole expedition. The translation of Carn Aosda from Gaelic is “Hill of Ages”, it certainly proved the case as it was me and these young fillies.

So, up the trail we tarried spotting numerous Red Grouse on the way with a few Mountain Hares spotted at a distance. The girls did really well climbing up the hill with more than a few laughs thrown in on the way. A few coups on doups were encountered on the way, and the odd camera lens being thrust into snow drifts, thankfully they were Canons and not the more prized Nikon ;-) No damage done thankfully. A couple of Ptarmigan were spotted but they didn’t hang about long, certainly not long enough for me to get a picture but my group were far better and had their fingers on the button and achieved a few decent shots. On reaching the summit after a celebratory dram we all spent a bit of time taking in the views. The sky was ever changing; from blacks to greys to blues, throwing light and shadows over the Cairngorms, Grampians, Eastern Perthshire and Angus hills; awesome and breathtaking.

On our descent a multitude of hares were spotted, all varying in their winter guise.

Red grouse and the ever present Ravens and crows threw in their rather raucous and strangely lovable “goback goback” and various ”caws” to the experience, brilliant.

After an absolutely awesome burger with cheese from the café we popped along to see the Snow Buntings.

We ended up meeting the “Legend” James Brown, his son and grandson. It was really great to see him still getting out and about as he takes some really cracking pics. As we drove out the glen we saw a couple of kestrels hanging about on telegraph poles/wires. We had a wee wing about Blair trying to find Waxwings but unfortunately none were spotted although we did see a few Redwing and Fieldfare.

As far as tours go I can hand on heart say I truly enjoyed my time with the girls, they worked extremely hard to get to the summit, were fantastic company and were just a pleasure to be around, thank you ladies x.