A month ago I travelled to the Cairngorms for a high-level walk around the Allt a’ Mharcaidh catchment. The Allt a’ Mharcaidh is a relatively small river in the north-western Cairngorm mountains and is a tributary of the Spey, joining it at Kincraig via the river Feshie. The catchment (or drainage basin, or watershed) of… Read more »
Posts By: Eddie
Light aircraft flight over Ayrshire
Last month I went for a short one-hour flight over Ayrshire. Lesley had bought me a voucher for my birthday last year for a one hour flight experience offered by Sportflight Scotland, who operate from Strathaven airfield in Ayrshire, which has a small grass runway. I was very lucky with the weather, as the scheduled… Read more »
Cool Britannia
Iain Cameron (with whom I visited a long-lasting snowpatch on Aonach Mòr last October, see the blog posting ‘Autumn snowfields in Lochaber‘) and Adam Watson have just written a book together, called ‘Cool Britannia‘. This book is a welcome guide for anyone interested in the little-known area (although now coming to more public prominence after… Read more »
The Scottish mountains: on the glacial ‘knife-edge’
Something I’ve always been interested in are the environmental conditions that are required for glaciers to form. Glaciers are often associated with high mountains and polar areas, and the major environmental factors that influence their existence are long-term climate trends (e.g. precipitation, average air temperatures and prevailing wind direction), latitude and altitude, and local topography… Read more »
Wreck of a WWII Mosquito bomber in the Cheviot Hills
Last week I went walking in the Cheviot hills, just south of Kelso. I walked along the Pennine Way past some horseriders and up to the 564m summit of The Curr. There were great views northwards into the Scottish Borders and south to the summit of the Cheviot in England, just a few kilometres away.
Autumn snowfields in Lochaber
Three weeks ago I travelled to Lochaber to walk to the summit of Aonach Mòr. The purpose of the trip was to locate an area on the mountain which contains a long-lasting snowpatch from last winter. I’ve visited similar areas in the Cairngorm mountains many times (see several previous blog postings and my website page… Read more »
Sgùrr na Sgine
On Saturday last weekend I climbed Sgùrr na Sgine in Glen Shiel with Katy. Our original plan had been to climb to the summit of The Saddle via the Forcan Ridge, but as the weather was pretty bad, we decided to do the slightly easier summit of Sgùrr na Sgine which lies just to the… Read more »
Summer ice in rock fissures and caves
I’ve written a lot in my blog postings about snowfields that persist in mountainous regions at high altitudes into the summer months (and beyond), but there is a related phenomenon that I have only recently become aware of, and that is of winter ice persisting into the summer months in rock fissures (or fractures) and… Read more »
Summer snowfields in the Cairngorms (4)
During my recent 2-day trip to Ben Macdui I took the opportunity to have a look and see what snowpatches are still surviving in the vicinity of the summit of Ben Macdui. This follows on from my trip to the Cairn Gorm – Ben Macdui plateau in early July (see the blog posting ‘Summer snowfields… Read more »
Sgòr Mòr and Ben Macdui
A few weeks ago I travelled to Linn of Dee near Braemar and cycled along Glen Lui towards Ben Macdui with the intention of walking up to the summit via Glen Luibeg from the south. The weather was very wet and low clouds meant there wasn’t very much in the way of views, so I… Read more »
I am a software engineer / database administrator / web developer living in Edinburgh, Scotland. In my spare time I like to travel and take photographs (especially of mountains). See my main website here: Eddie's Photo Archive