Winter weekend

Tonight (Saturday) we are fully off the grid and so I won’t be able to post this until we have a phone signal at some point on Sunday.

We woke a bit chillier than normal to find the boiler flashing with an error code. When we also found we couldn’t make a cup of tea to warm up we soon realised the gas flow was the issue. As Illya claimed he checked the gas on Wednesday and it was fine, he was the one who had to brave the cold in his PJs to investigate. He still swears the dial on the tank says it isn’t empty but he did find that the second tank was switched off so luckily we could swap over and continue our trip. 

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We went to investigate some trails at Ballater Pannanich forest. It must be the shortest distance we have ever cycled in 3.5 hrs. Each hike up to the top of the trails took about 30 minutes and as the runs down were pretty technical it took as long to come down as to walk up. Not sure I agree with the “blue” difficulty classification on the TrailForks app. We did have fun but we had to abandon any thoughts of doing the Heartbreak Ridge circuit afterwards as we didn’t have enough daylight left.

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Staying the night at Line of Dee which is a beautiful spot on the Braemar side of the Cairngorm mountains. It is quite remote hence the lack of phone signals. The plan is to get an early start tomorrow and make the most of the ever-shortening daylight at this time of the year.