Day 9
Saturday 17th May - Derry Lodge to Loch Callater
I left Derry Lodge in the company of John and Stephanie once more.
After about a mile Gina McNeish came up the track towards us and said that we might want to comb our hair (!) as cameron McNeish was on his way with a video camera. This was for a documentary which was being made about the Challenge. We soon spotted Cameron with his little camera and stopped for a chat (cameron was John's ex-boss).
After that interlude we went a bit wrong for a while by taking the wrong track, but recovered and passed into the grounds of Mar Lodge. Mar Lodge is a late 19th century shooting lodge now owned by the Scottish National Trust. Its very plush. On the way out of the grounds, the Ranger stopped for a chat and said that next year they'd quite like to mark the TGO's 30th anniversary with some sort of event, such as a ceilidh, and that they'd allow camping on the lawns (!)
We then joined the road into Braemar. There's not much alternative to this. We passed the time by poking an ants nest with a violet and watching it turn pink as the ants squirted formic acid at it.
A bit of shopping, a quick nosh and some lightweight boozing in Braemar saw me on the road South towards Glenshee. After a few miles of this, I turned off on to a rough track that goes to Lochcallater Lodge, passing a couple of groups of sulky DofE kids on the way.
Lochcallater Lodge has an MBA bothy and Stan and Bill's lodge. Stan and Bill work as estate ghillies (I believe) and are legends in their own lunchtimes and allow camping around the lodge, provide a few beds or bits of floor and also do a fine line in entertainment - usually involving quantities of various whiskies. About a dozen of us, plus a couple of fishermen and a pet dog enjoyed an evening of scotch tasting and silly songs.
Somebody fell off a stool......
I played paper and comb (in the musicman round song).
15 miles (now up to 143) and 750 feet of uphill - and now a few miles ahead of schedule, really meaning that I'd managed to chop a lump off a hard following day....
