365 Day 36 - Glen Etive

365 Day 36 - Glen Etive

I've decided that that for the next 5 days I will use this, not only as a home for my 365 project, but also as a diary type blog for my Glencoe trip. I had thought of doing it seperately but can't see a way of separating the entries out so minght as well stick to one.

So, I got here, train journey great, spent most of it finishing a book I started last week. Overnight hotel pretty basic but all I wanted was somewhere close to the railway station to sleep. Picked up at Glasgow Queen station at 9am by Colin and his driver Justin, who is a German paramedic and does these trips with Colin in his holidays from his real job, and met the rest of the gang, 8 of us in all. Maggie, whom I know from the Assynt trip in Oct 12, Andrea, who works for the NFU, Ioan, who went to the same school as my husband, Matias, a Frenchman who lives in a Surrey village called Normandy, John a neurosurgeon and a couple of others whose names I have forgotton.

We headed out to our hotel in Kentallen which is about 3 or 4 miles further on from Glencoe village. The Holly Tree House started life as Kentallen Railway station and is now a really nice hotel and seafood restaurant with 20 well equiped rooms, all of which have stunning views of Loch Leven. After checking in, introductions and lunch we headed back the way we came, though Glencoe and turned up towards Glen Etive. With no winter to speak of there is a little snow on the tops of the hills but generally the landscape is just very wet and boggy with deer running wild in huge numbers and very much more tame than I had imagined. We stopped and took photographs and they were no more than 6 - 10 feet from us and just went on munching on the dried grass and other vegetation. We drove about 8 or so miles into the glen before stopping and heading down what seemed a very well made track into the moor, round the back of a house and towards a little bridge that we could see in the distance, then up towards some waterfalls, which given the reain they have had are stunning at the moment. Needless to say, the 'well made track' didn't last long and before we knew it we were trudging through very rough peat bog. It probably took about 45 minutes to get to our location by which time I had already gone in over the tops of my boots so had wet feet for the rest of the afternoon and as I write, my boots are propped open on top of the radiator in the hope that they are dry by morning! We spent the next couple of hours up and down these waterfalls and watching for the odd hint of colour in an otherwise very white sky before heading back to the car. I always find going down these tracks much harder than going up and managed to slip and land on my rear end twice! Thankfully only my pride was hurt.

Back to the hotel and time for a lovely long soak before a drink and a chance to get to know my new found friends a little better, dinner which was absolutely super, then an early night as we have a 7am start in the morning. I did manage to download my picture before going to bed though and as there will be plenty of landscapes over the next few days I'm sure, todays picture has to be one of the deer, if you look closely you can just make out a rainbow behind him.