Thursday 30 September 2021.
(Cairngorms National Park)
Earlier in the week we had decided that on Thursday we might go and look around Aviemore. This turned out to be good planning, as the weather today was decidedly less appealing than the last couple of days. Even though we have had showers all week, they have been light in nature and the clouds remained high enough to see the mountains. Today, we had proper weather…
As a result there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm for moving anywhere this morning. We relaxed, I blogged, it eventually we decided to walk down to the Falls of Truim, some waterfalls that are near to our cottage. Fortunately, by the time we were ready, it wasn’t raining. We followed the advice in the guest book and set off across the nearby field to do a circular route. The first part was easy enough, gently downhill, across a field and past a memorial stone that dated back to 1866.
After that, we walked, as directed, to the far corner and through a field gate, before entering a copse and down a steep bank. We found the ‘beach’, a pebbly strip which apparently offers a good swimming spot, and a cave opposite. From there, the directions were to follow a path through the woods…
We had several goes at finding the path, which mostly turned into beating back bracken, fighting through tree branches or stopping before reaching the edge of a cliff, but none of them looked promising. Eventually we decided we’d have to go back to the fence line and give up on the circular route. And just as we’d decided that, there it was, a path, large as life and twice as natural, right there…I swear it wasn’t there beforehand.
With the path now located we had an easy plod through the woods to the Falls of Truim, a collection of tumbling water and whirlpools. After we’d looked at these, we followed the private road back to our cottage. We were lucky, it hardly rained while we were out, but started again once we were back inside.
Lunch was going to be a sandwich but ended up being a full-on buffet, with sandwiches, pasta salad, cheese, sausage rolls, crisps…the Cedar Cafe in full swing again. We then drove up to Aviemore as planned and browsed the various outdoor clothing shops. Although we tried, we weren’t able to find anything to spend money on, so finally found our way back to Tesco to buy some food for tonight.
We took the slow road back, rather than the A9, and had a lovely view of Loch Alvie as we passed by. The road wound past Loch Insh, before bringing us to Ruthven Barracks. We had a good look around here, despite the drizzle.
We left, taking the road into Kingussie, where we had to wait for the train to pass, before returning to the cottage, for an evening of cooking, eating, lighting the fire and relaxing.
Post script…for those with time on their hands, or for those who should be doing something else, but are looking for an excuse to put it off, here’s a short video from yesterday’s ride.
utahhiker55 