Scenes around Kirkmichael, Perthshire

As you can probably tell from all my jaunts out the B&B is quite quiet at the moment, but that's the time of year for you, although last week was quite busy.  The last two winters there seemed to be constant snow and ice on the ground for months, so it is nice to get out and about walking as I don't get the opportunity as much in the summer.  Still plenty time for more snow though - it's only the middle of January after all.

 Kirkmichael is about 20 minutes up the road, take the turn off onto the A924 at Bridge of Cally.  The River Ardle runs through the pretty village and there are a couple of hotels and an excellent shop.  More information about the area can be found here.

A hidden monument

Fabulous scenery in this area

The remains of Whitefiled Castle on the distant hills (I zoomed in on this)

The Strathardle Highland Gathering is held every August in Kirkmichael, a great example of traditional highland games.

A walk into the mist

Today I went up to Enochdhu to do part of the Cateran Trail walk which I did last year in torrential rain, here is last years blog, this year the general theme was mist so hopefully next time the sun will be splitting the sky and I will get some great photos.   This time I did a loop which took me about 3 hours 45 minutes.

 Some beautiful blackface rams

 Instead of heading left at this sign directing you to Glenshee take the path straight ahead past the fire tower and keep following it and it will bring you around in a loop at the Upper Lunch Hut.

 The mist soon descended but luckily the footpath was easy to navigate along and the only sounds were the occasional startled grouse flying out of the heather.

 Made it to the Upper Lunch Hut, the door was a bit stiff and I thought it was locked, but a heavy push and it opened and I signed the visitors book and left my calling card, I noticed our local Blairgowrie shop All Things Fair had done the same thing.

 Great tally of geocaches today, 15 in total and I did a bit of subtle marketing by leaving a QR sticker in the log book :-)

 Not far to go now and the dog will sleep well tonight and me too no doubt.

Walking and Geocaching at Deuchny Wood

A lovely but cold day today with the mist hanging low in the sky.  Daughter No.1 and I took a jaunt down to Perth to Deuchny Wood to do a bit of geocaching.  We logged an impressive 10 geocaches, well impressive for us!  I think the 'world and his wife and dogs' were out enjoying the sunny winter day today.  We parked at the Jubilee Car park and started off through Jim Aitken's Arboretum.  We seemed to end up going the opposite way from what was intended and got a bit lost in an area of fallen trees but soon got back on track and completed which was in essence a circular walk with a couple of detours.

Many geocaches have 'trackables' in them which you move onto other geocaches, I don't venture far so not really much point in taking them.

Great place for mountain biking





Quite a bit of storm damage

Another 'trackable'

Views over the Carse of Gowrie

Curling Pond

More information about the woodlands can be found here