The Rothiemurchus Forest and Creag a’Chalamain

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, June 30 2012.

Six weeks ago in mid-May I travelled to the Cairngorms for a trip to take advantage of some rare good weather that was forecast. Upon arrival in the evening I camped overnight in an excellent site in the heart of Rothiemurchus Forest, only 45 minutes’ walk from the road at Coylumbridge but with a real… Read more »

Walks in Snowdonia and the Yorkshire Dales

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, Travel, May 30 2012.

A month ago Lesley and I travelled to England and Wales for a week’s holiday. During the trip we went on two great walks in upland areas. The first was in Snowdonia National Park. We started at the village of Beddgelert where we were staying in a B&B and walked east out of the village… Read more »

Introduction to scrambling course

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, May 14 2012.

Last weekend I attended a two-day Introduction to Scrambling course at Glenmore Lodge. I had undertaken this course before, in August last year but was only able to attend for the first day. On that previous course the instruction group spent the day in the Chalamain Gap in the northern corries area of the Cairngorms… Read more »

Cross-country skiing

Posted by & filed under Mountains & hills, March 4 2012.

Last weekend I travelled to Huntly for a weekend cross-country skiing course at the Huntly Nordic and Outdoor Centre. Cross-country skiing is something I have always wanted to try and my interest was rekindled recently after reading Adam Watson’s accounts of cross-country skiing journeys in his recently-published autobiography (see my recent blog post ‘It’s a… Read more »

Clachnaben and two aircraft wreck sites

Posted by & filed under Military/Aircraft, Mountains & hills, March 1 2012.

Last week I travelled to Aberdeenshire and walked to the 589m summit of Clachnaben from Glen Dye. Despite being a relatively small hill, Clachnaben is very distinctive in having an unusual and large granite tor on the summit. The weather conditions on this walk were quite unusual with not a trace of snow for many… Read more »

Avalanche and navigation awareness course

Posted by & filed under Military/Aircraft, Mountains & hills, January 24 2012.

Yesterday I went on a short 1-day winter skills course at Glenmore Lodge. The course was an avalanche and navigation awareness course. There were a couple of classroom lectures about about planning winter routes in the mountains and about avalanches in general. The bulk of the day however was spent in a small group on… Read more »

The map is not the territory

Posted by & filed under Books, IT & the Internet, Military/Aircraft, Mountains & hills, Science, January 19 2012.

1. The divide in the discipline of Geography Geography is a somewhat schizophrenic discipline. Is it a ‘social’ science or is it a ‘hard’ science? The two aspects of the discipline have been in conflict since the ‘quantitative revolution‘ of the 1950s and 1960s within Geography, and the ‘hard’ science of Geography is represented in… Read more »

A snow book, northern Scotland

Posted by & filed under Books, Mountains & hills, Science, December 22 2011.

Adam Watson has been continuously observing and collecting data about snow in the north-east of Scotland (and particularly in the Cairngorm mountains) since the 1930s, and this important book represents the culmination of that activity. It will have a strong claim in the future to being the standard reference work in the discipline of research… Read more »