Jock's Road

Finding the way down from the plateau would be difficult in poor visibility but it was no problem on the day that we chose with Loch Callater glinting brightly in the distance. There are little cairns and metal posts that could be waymarkers but essentially you are on your own to find a way down on tussocky, ankle turning ground.

We had maps (Landranger 43 and 44) and a compass but these were as backup for a GPS with maps on it which showed us the way unerringly. My experience has been that a GPS will only do this when you are not relying on it - hence the maps. I don't imagine Jock had a GPS so I've no idea how he managed.

We stopped for lunch when we got down to the burn leading into Loch Callater that you can see in the picture. At some point the path magically re-appears beside the burn and we found a post that probably had a sign on it at some point but looked as if was mostly used as a scratching post by the deer.

We ate the the delicious sandwiches lovingly prepared at about 6am while straining our eyes to pick out the stags that we could hear bellowing on the hillside. At this point the rain began again but once more it was very short lived.

Once down to the A93 car park we were hopeful that we might somehow get a lift to Braemar but that was not to be and we made our way on to the Old Military Road that follows the Clunie River through Braemar golf course.

It was a lovely evening and under normal circumstances it would have been an enjoyable stroll but the old legs were now more than a bit weary having been going for about 8 hours. We were very glad to see the Fife Arms Hotel appear in the distance and we soon had our boots off and made our way down to the bar for a well earned beer.

The total distance was 16 miles with an ascent of 870 metres and it took us 8 hours in total. Our apprehension about the walk had been unnecessary and we felt a great feeling of satisfaction at having completed it. The weather is probably more important on this route than on many others but we were very lucky to have almost ideal conditions.

We slept very well and after a good breakfast the faithful backup team arrived to take us home.

Jock's Road

I was walking one of the marked routes frorm Glen Doll car park with a friend when he mentioned that there was a route called Jock's Road that went through the hills to Braemar. We both agreed that it would be a good idea to walk it together - some day. A couple of years passed and the subject came up again and we looked into it a bit more. It had been a drove road that became the subject of an action in the House of Lords in 1888 when the landowner tried to stop access. The man who brought the action against the landowner was a shepherd called Jock Winter and he won his case. Descriptions of the route usually focus on the fact that the middle section is a high,exposed and featureless plateau that is difficult to navigate in poor weather. This, combined with tales of people perishing in blizzards on the route, began to make us think that perhaps this would not be the best day out for a couple of pensioners.

Against this background we plumped for the 15th of October as a day to have a go and were rewarded with a great, if tiring, day out.

The logistics of this walk are not easy. The end points are the car park at Glen Doll (where we are in the picture) and another car park on the A93 at Auchallater, a couple of miles south of Braemar. That distance is 14 miles but by road it is much, much longer and City Link have yet to announce their Glen Doll to Braemar service.

To get around this, we enlisted the help of a one-woman support team who not only did all the driving but made some wonderful sandwiches.

We decided to tackle the route from South to North, starting at Glen Doll. We set off about 9am in a slight drizzle and were mentally calculating how wet we might be if it continued for 8 hours when magically, it stopped.The rest of the day was spent in sunshine and clear visibilty and very pleasant temperatures.

Jock's Road out of Glen Doll meanders pleasantly through a forest for a couple of miles before becoming an equally pleasant path as it escapes the forest and begins to wind its way up the hillside. As we made our way up this path we could hear the constant roar of stags on the hillside although trying to pick them out with the naked eye was very difficult. There were herds of a dozen or more all the way along the walk and when your eye did manage to pick them out you could follow them. Occasionally a group could be seen high on the skyline making their way along.

As the path out of Glen Doll starts to to rise towards the plateau known as the Mounth, you pass a shelter which was built by someone called Davy Glen in 1966, seven years after a group of five men from a Glasgow walking club lost their lives in a blizzard. The shelter is known as Davy's Bourach and is very basic but would provide welcome shelter in a storm.

The door is painted red as you can see in the photograph but it would probably be hard to find in a snowstorm when the path is covered over.

Once you are up on the plateau, the path goes from being indistinct to invisible and all around is heather and bog with hares scampering around everywhere. We resisted the temptation to chase them!

The picture on the right is Loch Callater Lodge which sits at the North end of Loch Callater. We did our walk during the deer stalking season and the white pony in the picture has a deer saddle on it and is used for carrying deer carcasses off the hillside.

When I mentioned to my neighbour that we were going to do this walk, he told me that his grandfather had been the gamekeeper at the lodge. To add to my apprehension about the walk, he told me that his grandfather had come out one morning and walked up the track from the house in the snow and had found the body of a man who had set off from Glen Doll but not quite made it.

The walk down from Loch Callater Lodge to Auchallater is an easy amble down a good track as shown in the picture on the left.