Northwards Ho!
Trip Start
Jan 05, 2012
1
47
115
Trip End
Ongoing
Where I stayed
Banchory, Scotland, United Kingdom
Friday, April 20, 2012
Tebay Service Station is something of an institution with its afficionados. I was introduced to it by a colleague on a business trip to Newcastle a couple of years ago. It's in a remote spot between the Howgill Fells and the Lake District and unlike most of the rest stops on British motorways it is independently run. The food is better than any of the others. It's always freshly cooked so no danger of congealed eggs or bacon that is drying out at the edges and curling up. We both went for the 9-item option (plus free toast and marmalade) that we couldn't quite finish.
The M6 in this section is quite pretty and there's reasonable scenery for most of the run up to the populated bit of Scotland. It gets quite nice again from about Stirling where a good view of the excellent castle can be obtained at 70 mph.
From Perth we took the A93 which means a drive through the city centre before getting on to the road that climbs high and slowly into the Cairngorms mountains. We stopped at the Glen Shee ski centre to look for Ptarmigans, a high mountain game bird that we had failed to see in Iceland last month and one of the diminishing number of species that I've seen and Julie hasn't. There was a pair of Red Grouse behind the ski centre and the male was displaying to the female despite the low temperatures (about 2C). There was still plenty of snow on the hill tops which to our surprise were all visible. We'd expected low cloud because it had been raining on and off for most of the day.
Another bird watcher arrived by car so we went over to say hello having managed to dodge a couple of short but icy showers in the shelter provided by the ski-centre buildings. He too was looking for Ptarmigans and told us that he had just seen a Ring Ouzel about half a mile back. He was on his way to do voluntary work at the Loch Garten RSPB reserve, about which more later. We pooled our resources and continued to scan the slopes and horizons but only found more Red Grouse. When we'd had enough of looking for invisible birds Julie and I headed back down the road to the Ring Ouzel location. There were several calls that we could hear that hinted at Ring Ouzel but nothing definite and the only birds visible where Meadow Pipits with the odd Common Gull overhead.
Our 'pause’ near the high-point of the A93 had by now turned into about 90 minutes but we had other plans for the day so set of down the north side towards the Dee valley. On the way we saw another male Red Grouse at the roadside. I did two U-turns on the fairly narrow road to get back to him with Julie on the right side and she managed a couple of quite nice close ups. He wasn’t such a smart bird as the one seen a few miles back, looking a bit worn in places but it’s always nice to get close-ups without trying too hard.
The first major settlement in Deeside reached via the A93 is Braemar and as we were leaving the village I observed that I was surprised that we hadn’t seen any Red Deer on the road through the mountains but that we should now be looking out for Roe Deer. Before I had even finished the sentence we spotted four deer at the far side of a field next to the road. There was hardly any traffic so I pulled over so that we could use our binoculars to confirm that they were indeed Roe Deer.
Continuing down the road that runs along the north side of the River Dee we soon passed Balmoral and then drive through pretty Ballater. The next village is Aboyne which became famous nationally and briefly three weeks earlier when temperatures reached 23.4C, a March record for Scotland and hotter than the high temperatures recorded on the same date for Lisbon, Athens, Cairo and Bermuda. Things were back to normal by 3rd April, when several inches of snow fell. Today the thermometer was hovering around a fairly meagre 8-10.
Our base for the next few days was the Best Western Burnett Arms Hotel which stands pretty much in the centre of the village of Banchory on the high street which is also still the A93. We got a pleasant room on the first floor at the front but we didn’t stop there for long because as usual we had things to do.
Aberdeen is fast getting a reputation as the best place in Europe for land-based dolphin watching. There is a resident pod of Bottle-nosed Dolphins in the area that often visits the mouth of the River Dee where they can easily be seen from the Torry Battery on the south side of the city. There are also Harbour Porpoises in quite good numbers. The city is a nightmare for traffic though and it seems to take a very long time to get short distances on weekdays, especially if you’re not familiar with the one way system.
As we hadn’t had time to get any lunch we bought some sandwiches (or pies) and drinks from a Banchory bakery which we munched shortly after finding a parking space at the Battery with a view down to the harbour. There were no dolphins obvious but plenty of sea birds and a few boats going out on the high tide. However when we finished our ‘lunch’ and started to use our binoculars it took only a minute or so for us to find our first dolphins. We watched them for over an hour. They were active with many leaps clear of the water and occasional forays into the mouth of the harbour, though they tended to disappear when boats were leaving, which was frequently.
Having returned to the hotel to get ready for an evening out we went across the road to the Douglas Arms where Julie had a chilli (not spicy enough but very tasty) and I had a lamb shank with a casserole of root vegetables which was rather good. The pubs in the village centre all have quiz machines and we made a tidy profit before an early-ish night.
