I’ve started putting all my routes on View Ranger for free download for anyone that wants them – at some point I’ll collate all the links on to a ‘Local Walks’ page on this site – when I get a chance as I am very busy at the moment.

The location is Lochgoilhead in front of what is now the post office, and the baby in the pram is me.  As I look about a year old, I will date myself by saying that the year must have been 1968.  The lady in the background is my Grandma – not sure if the car in the picture was my father’s or not.  We lived in Balloch at the time, so we must have been taking Grandma for a day out in the country.

Nothing seems to have changed that much in nearly fifty years – although I notice that there is a definitely not politically correct gollywog in the shop window.  When I was a child we used to collect the labels from Robertson’s jam and exchange them for golly badges (I never had enough labels to get many badges because my Dad made most of our jam himself).  I see there is a site about them here – http://golliwogg.co.uk/robertsons.htm – glad to see that golly is still going after all his tribulations.

R and I had been going to climb Beinn Lochain today, but the cloud was down at about 350m and we wouldn’t have got much of a view, so instead we set out to find a path we knew existed but had never walked – between Lettermay and Cormonachan. We found the path and set off. By 8:30am it was quite warm and spring like. Every ditch, pond and puddle was packed with busily copulating frogs and slimy with spawn. After a while we heard a great honking noise and a huge V of birds passed overhead heading north – I’m not sure whether they were geese or Whopper swans.

Primroses were out on the banks, and there was a general ‘green’ smell of growing things. When we got home, I noticed that the first few narcissi are out in our garden.

The heron is back on the pond daily (I wonder why that would be??) and the badgers are back in the early evening. So spring on the Donich has now officially arrived.

In the morning it was clear and bitterly cold – our pond was frozen over. We went on the upper path – there are no heiland coos there yet but I hope Billy and his harem turn up soon – and the views out over the loch were spectacular. Back along the Inverlounin road and I took a picture over a house wall where the view is particularly good (I wonder how many pictures on the Internet that house roof appears in).

Then in the evening (now there is just enough light for it after work) I walked up to the waterfalls. The light was enchanting, the clouds just turning pink over the Steeple and illuminating a jet trail across the clear sky.

And this morning of course it is back to raining and dreich – which is a shame as we were hoping it would stay dry so that we can climb Beinn Lochain on Sunday (our wedding anniversary).

R and I scared a heron off our pond this morning and there are plenty of signs of spring around the village, but the snow being back definitely shows us that winter has not departed for this year as yet. There were also some good tracks down our drive which are definitely not the cats so must be a badger or fox.

I’d love to be off for a mountain walk today, but unfortunately (or from the point of view of the company finances, fortunately) I have tests booked in until the end of the month.

These are some views of the snowscape and tracks this morning.

We had the most spectacular sunset as well – as you can see from the pictures.

The crocuses by the front door seem to be surviving both the frost and whatever it is that keeps trying to eat them anyway.

Winter Pond in the morning

Spring Flowers in the afternoon

There are a few catkins on the trees, the first spring flowers are out, and today R and I heard the first woodpecker. If last year is anything to go by, within a week or so they will be drumming throughout the woodland here. They’re not often seen (though very occasionally we get one at the bird table), but they are certainly noisy.

On the subject of noisy, our jays are also starting to squawk at each other, trying to get a dominant position to hold on to this territory – which must be a very sought after one considering how many nuts we put out. The first year we were here there was one pair which must have had a lot of surviving offspring, because at the moment there are no less than six. I do like them but I hope we don’t end up with 12 this year because they will eat us out of house and home. We also counted six red squirrels at one time in the feeding area yesterday.

The picture is of a rather nice hellebore which is now out in our garden.

Anyway, the walk (up to the waterfall, on to the side of Beinn Donich, and back round the long way) was very interesting. No one had been before us since the snow – no human that is. But there were animal tracks everywhere, mainly badger, fox, deer and marten, but we saw others we couldn’t recognize. It was so pristine, and the snow had covered over the ugly mess the construction work on the hydro is leaving at the moment. Coming back, we could see over the village, laid out in perfect monochrome, as though it were a black and white photograph of itself.

Later on this afternoon I was working at my desk and noticed that it was getting dark even though it was only 3:30pm. When I looked outside, the snow was swirling down and the sky quite white.

Now (9pm) I just went out to give the creatures their nightly bowl of peanuts, and there is snow on the ground but it has cleared again and there is a crescent moon hanging low amongst the frosty stars. What a place….