Skandi

Well my friend and I did go camping the pictures are here We didn't do to badly, with 10 miles on the first day and 15 on the second, the plan was to spend three days and do around 35 miles, but it didn't quite happen. On the first day we were busy following a "path" it was on the ordinance survey map but lead us nicely to a fast river and a deer fence. After climbing down a small cliff to get round the fence, passing the bags down in turns, we found that the path didn't exist in the slightest and the footbridge mentioned on the map wasn't there either, although to give the map some due there was evidence of there being a bridge there about 20 years ago. (map printed 2007)

The missing footbridge made things interesting, because it meant fording the river, at it's widest it was about 10m and 1ft deep (do I mix units or what!) and at it's narrowest 2m and about 6ft deep. However it was very fast and extremely cold (snow melt). We found a spot and got about half way, the rocks were rounded but covered in algae making footing very slippery, but we managed until; the next bit turned out to be deeper than expected and I (going first) ended up with water half way up my thighs, my friend who is considerably shorter than I would have been even deeper, so we gave up. Wet for nothing never mind, we did cross eventually but this left us off the path and short stumps has trouble walking through the 2ft high heather. So now it was camping time!

The first place we wanted to camp was a (again on the map) forested valley, when we arrived it had been felled and all that was left were blackened stumps. Ok Ordinance survey cannot be expected to know about the forestry commissions plans. So on to spot two, also marked as wood, well this time there were trees, if that is you count twigs 3 foot high as trees, so this valley will be forested in 30 years time, woo we just discovered a clairvoyant map!

Eventually we settled on an abandoned croft as a camping site, of course as soon as we had walked for 30 seconds to get water we found a better one, sigh always the way.

All in all it was still fun, we saw some nature a herd of 42 Deer who stood and stared until we left THEIR valley, hundreds of grouse, hares, and 3 salmon heads, evidence of otters??