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2023: Start of a new year
January: We had a trip to Edinburgh to meet up with Penny and Antony, attend a concert and visit the Doctor Who exhibition. As hard to believe as it is, I very much remember the excitement of the first screening ‘An Unearthly Child’ in November 1963.
February: We had a ‘Valentines’ weekend at Achray House, St Fillans. We did a couple of nice walks; the first repeated a section of the Glen Ogle track that we had cycled for Julie’s birthday in 2019.
Glen Ogle Viaduct: closed due to a rock fall in 1965 after less than 100-years of active life. Constructing the railway line through the pass was an enormous undertaking, but the route was always bound to be at risk due to the rugged landscape. The old railway bed is now dedicated to the Rob Roy Way and National Cycle Network Route-7. Whether on bicycle or foot this is a beautiful route!
The walk started at Lochearnhead, from where a steep accent brings you to the old rail-bed. We walked as far as Lochan Lairig Cheile (a mid-sized loch at the pass summit), and then returning back for a half a mile to pick up the route of a military road built during the Jacobite period.
			There is sign of beaver activity in these here parts.
Built in 1749 by Major William Caufield, the military road has numerous stone-arch bridges over equally numerous burns: this section of the walk is rather boggy! Julie’s favourite viaduct Back to the hotel for our second, and final, night’s stay. And then the following day we headed home. The journey is less than one and a half hours, therefore we had time to include another short walk.
The Comrie Circular Walk is, as the name implies, a lovely 3-hours, or so, walk from the centre of Comrie. The route takes you through Glen Lednock, a wooded glen with a nice waterfall called Deil’s Cauldron. Early in the walk we got the first hints of the devastation wreaked by Storm Arwen.
It will be decades before this walk returns to its wooded beauty. We’ve seen this level of devastation several times now, in various locations in Scotland: such a pity that so many places of natural beauty have been impacted by just one storm.
In 1984 the route to Deil’s Cauldron was made an easier, and safer, undertaking.
Well that’s the start of our 2023. We hope you are all getting out into our great British countryside!
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