The Cairngorms III

So we battened down the hatches, the matches, the latches and the patches and, (wearing our little Glenshee Adventure moustache with pride), settled down for what turned out, not surprisingly, to be quite a wind-rocked night.

(No, we hadn't removed the wheels).

Morning broke, (as they tend to do), but not many of our mornings are like that one.

We'd been slightly sheltered by a high, but thin hedge.

Alas, my dream of winning the highest ever hightop competition had been in vain, but the wind was fairly stirring it up. And a lot of snow was falling too.

It wasn't desperately cold.

I wandered off to find the site warden and his wife and to ask what weather and travel news they'd picked up. (Our very good RDS radio had become confused by the weather and from Five Live we could only get vague and generalised weather news).

"The pass won't open today", he said.

"If you're going to go for it, you'll have to go all the way to Aberdeen.

Don't turn off anywhere.

And the stretch south of Aberdeen to Stonehaven is described as hazardous".

After a while he drove his little Fordson Dexter and snowplough around the campsite roadway pushing through the blizzard and about 7" of powdery stuff and, of course, he left a 12" wall in front of our patch of hardstanding.

So I cleared it away, with a spade I'd brought with us for that very purpose!

Perhaps it's only now that you're beginning to appreciate what a meticulously planned adventure ours was!

No?

Ah, well.

After a few more mad gusts the wind dropped significantly.

Soon the snow stopped falling and almost stopped blowing about too. We grabbed the obvious opportunity and cautiously pottered out onto the A93.

We still had enough time off work to stop for another night, or even two, but not too far from the back of my mind was the thought that if we didn't get out now we miss a very exciting gig in Leeds.

Top Next