Peaceful walking routes around historic landmarks filled our writer's weekend
Words & pictures ❚ Felicity Martin
The light was so wonderfully clear and bright as I drove along the A95 towards Grantown-on-Spey that I couldn’t resist stopping for a closer look at the picturesque old Bridge of Avon. Its setting was gorgeous, enclosed by the River Avon’s steep banks, where beeches reached up to a deep blue sky. With an entrance arch to Ballindalloch Castle and a Gothic-style gate lodge attached to the far end of the bridge, the scene had an entrancing atmosphere.
Like all the stone bridges to be seen today around Strathspey, the Bridge of Avon is a survivor of repeated floods. Opened in 1800, a plaque records that the river rose 7m during the Muckle Spate (big flood) of 1829, which destroyed numerous other bridges over the River Spey and its tributaries. When there is heavy rain or rapid snowmelt on the mountains, these watercourses can rise to fearsome heights. This attractive structure carried A95 traffic until a modern road bridge was built in 1991 and is now only used by pedestrians.
I was visiting the northwest Cairngorms for a long weekend of walking. My mission was to revise the Pathfinder Cairngorms walks guidebook, checking routes and amending them where necessary. I also needed to see what had changed on four of the longer walks that I suspected would need some particular attention.
The Bridge of Avon was on the drive from my first walk to Grantown-on-Spey Caravan Park, where I was staying. It was the first of several notable bridges and historic roads I encountered on my travels around Strathspey.
Earlier in the day I had done a walk further east in Glenlivet, starting in Tomnavoulin and making a circuit of Carn Daimh. The Gaelic name means ‘hill of the stag’ and, sure enough, I saw a dozen red deer stags traversing its slopes in a line.
Although only 570m high, the hill proved to be a wonderful viewpoint. To the south lay the snow-clad Cairngorm mountain range, scalloped blue shadows marking its deep corries. Lower hill ranges stretched to either side, with the highest local summit, Ben Rinnes, standing snow-streaked in the north.
If I had been a week earlier, I would have been ploughing through thick drifts, especially on the shaded sections of path through forest. Now, in early March, I was experiencing the transition from winter to spring. Snow had accumulated in the lee of fences and trees, forming waves of hard-packed icy snow that had withstood the thaw. But lower down I saw lapwings displaying and heard oys
