Creag nam Ban revisited..

I'm feeling in a great mood today after the TGO Challenge news that I have been successful in the draw for next May.

{Red berries in the sunshine}

As the weather was good too, I took off to revisit Creag nam Ban. Unfortunately, this involved a bit of tarmac bashing/walking along the South Deeside Road to get to the gate onto the moorland. Although the sun was shining it was still quite wet and muddy underfoot so I had to stay alert for cars as they hit the puddles at the side of the road.  Despite trying quite hard none of them 'got' me.

Creag nam Ban or 'hill of the witch' isn't very high but has good views from the summit so I took my lunch with me. There are stories that a local witch was burned on this hill in the dim and distant past.

{Creag nam Ban from the road}

I remembered the last time I tried to get onto this hill when I discovered locked gates and therefore no access to the path.

{Beech trees beside the road}

Hoping that situation had been sorted out by the Park Access officer, I headed for the gates. There are two quite close to each other, with some high deer fencing with barbed wire wrapped around the posts and threaded along the fence. Sadly I found there had been no change. The gates have latches but also very old, heavily rusted chains with padlocks attached.

{Barbed wire, padlocked chain, no access!}

The recent barbed wire 'incident' suffered by Alan [ here ] meant that I was not prepared to risk climbing among the barbs so I turned and walked back along the road. There was another place where the wall beside the road had obviously been used to access the slope up to another part of the fence. But again, there were several strands of barbed wire.

Back down the road I tried an alternate access along a track behind some cottages. This time I could not even get as far as the junction of the paths as the field gate was locked and full of large, muddy, brown cows.

So now I'm cross! The access laws should prevent this kind of nonsense. Bah! Time for another call to the Access officer!

It's a shame they burnt the witch.........

{Baa!}