Well … it snowed last night !
But hardly enough to make a difference …
The only evidence really is on the cars, everything else just melted and disappeared.
There aren’t going to be any of the local atmospheric detail shots that I have been hanging out for around here, so I decide to head further south to the Grampian Mountains for the day. Unfortunately there aren’t any “loop” routes around which aren’t about 150 miles long. Something that long would just be driving on major routes and not really having a look around , so it looks like I will be doing a bit of there and back.
First location to aim for is a place called Dalwhinnie, apparently another whisky distillery … but I don’t have to go in !
On the way the weather is changing by the minute, at one moment clear blue skies and then it actually snows for about 30 seconds. It appears that we are actually climbing up past the snow line and there are quite large patches of snow on the ground off the side of the road.
The light in these mountains is making everything quite monochromatic which is a huge contrast with the current blue sky. So I pull to the side of the motorway in a layby and make the most of the opportunity.
The mountains have quite a graphic quality and one in particular for some reason has no snow on the top. It looks like it has been outlined with a pencil. I must be on the shadow side where the snow lasts longer.
From there I headed south east to Calvine heading for the Tay Forest. I have to admit that somewhere after Calvine my North, South, East and West got turned around and I never did find the Tay Forest …and ended up on a road to Rannoch Station. My map doesn’t have a “legend” to explain all the markings so what I thought were minor roads, allowing me to not have to retrace my steps, turned out to be railway lines! Oh well … back the way I came.
On the way out I see the first reasonable set of rapids which is accessible from the road without climbing over fences and down a ravine. Unfortunately while setting up, my polarising filter decides to disgorge part of its innards into the stream, and to make things worse the location isn’t all I was hoping for.
By now the afternoon is wearing on and although it’s only thirty miles “as the crow flies” my GPS is showing 100 road miles and 3 hours to get back “home”.
I decide to at least return on the other side of Loch Rannoch and am rewarded with some sunlight and an interesting little broken down jetty.
But by now it looks like I won’t get back until about 5pm and that’s late enough for me so I head off …
The weather does it’s strange thing around Dalwhinnie again with some very light snow but it is the A9 motorway so we all just ignore it. …
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