Speyside

Since the accident we have had many a long call with insurance companies and legal people, we have had an assessor out to visit and look at the van, and a caravan repair man who has told us we are ok to move it, and can therefore carry on, yippee! What we don’t know yet is whether it will be written off as we haven’t had a quote yet, both our visitors told us that the repair bill will be close to a write-off figure. We’ve now taped up the hole and covered it with polythene and are trundling on North…

Phil has ridden his bike numerous times; riding the Moray Monster trails at the nearby hill Ben Aigan, the 14 mile ride was a red graded route, but included a black and an “Extreme” bike park downhill. Both of which were unfortunately overgraded and were more like red’s, it was still a good fun ride though.
Also out to Fochabers where the main Moray Monster Trails are based. Once at the forestry car park Phil went off and rode the red/freeride route called the Fochabers Ring, this was a good fun 6 mile loop which after a long climb up to a huge cairn (a monument to the duchess of Richmond) then starts descending back to the car park, the downhill includes some great northshore (raised platform riding – think ewok’s!) as well as drops and jumps, so I rode that bit twice! Linda did a 2.5 mile walk which took her up to a slightly smaller cairn called Ranald’s Grave, Ranald was a tinker who used to rob wayfarers on the old Aberdeen to Inverness road, and the cairn is on the spot where he was executed.. We then headed over to Ordiequish where there were more tracks, Phil went on a 7.5 mile ride to do the black graded “Gully Monster”, a not particularly severe downhill, but a narrow bit of singletrack with a huge drop into a natural gully which made it huge fun because of the risk of falling off the edge! Linda did a 4 mile walk, and at one point joined Phil and walked/ran down the Gully Monster while he tried to keep up!

We parked up at Aberlour Distillery where we had a look in the shop and Phil bought a minature bottle of Abelour whisky, he also asked about the 2 hour tour but they were full up for the day, so it was a no go..
The dogs had to go for their walk, so we moved the car on-street and walked down to the River Spey, it was flowing quite fast but we still saw a few fishermen stood up to their waist in the water trying to catch their tea! We spotted a sign for the nearby Linn Waterfalls so decided to head up there, the small river Linn that headed past the distillery was also flowing fast (due to all the rain) so we thought it might be impressive. We weren’t disappointed when we got there with a huge amount of water cascading down the falls, the noise was immense.. After a 3 mile walk we went home to the van thoroughly soaked, so we put the fire on to dry out.


We visited Speyside Coopers which is where they make and restore the barrels for all the distilleries in the area, there was a visitors centre which we went in with an interesting display on the work of coopers, a short video on the firm and then up to a viewing area of the workplace with a interesting talk by a very nice tourguide. The coopers serve a 4 year apprenticeship and the firm has 15 coopers at the moment and 3 apprentices, which is the most they have had. It was fascinating to watch the coopers working as our guide explained what was going on and how the different machines work, though most of the work is very skilled and done by hand. We then had a little play at making our own barrels which was a great success. On to the shop where our tickets allowed us to have a taste of some local oak leaf wine which was very sweet, so the lady opened another bottle which was drier, still tasted like home made wine though – wine should be made from grapes y’know!


We then moved to a site at Grantown-On-Spey, luckily no problems on the way this time, far from it in fact as Phil gained a further 2 members of his “caravanner’s who wave at each other” club, and we arrived at Grantown on Spey in around an hour. (Phil thinks it’s unfair that motorhome drivers all wave at each other when on the road, so for the whole trip he’s been waving at other caravanners to try and start the trend, so far only 13 other people think it’s a good idea!)

For Phil’s birthday we had a nice chilled out day in the ‘van with some prezzies (see picture!), cake and a bottle of fizz! We then set out for a 3 mile waymarked walk which started in the woods at the back of the site, after spotting a red squirrel we continued up into the woods to reveal a spectacular view of the Cairngorm peaks, the tops dipping into the cloud, but we could still see snow poking out a little lower down! In the evening we headed out to The Grant Arms Hotel where we had a yummy meal then a wee dram in the pub down the way.





We have now moved to Aviemore. Our most expensive site yet and what a rip off! Site itself is a mix of caravans (mainly run down seasonals) and tents, lodges and a motel. The bloke on reception was rude and did his spiel in a drone, toilet block is closed from 12 to 3pm blah blah blah! Ahh well, we are close to the town, and still on the move!