Rob-n-Hild Take the High Road!

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Aberdeen Brimmond Hill walk 6.7 km in 2:49 hours but with 1:35 hours walking time. 277m climbed to a max height of 125m.

It was a very productive day with a hike up Brimmond Hill, laundry, shopping at Argos and Decathlon, viewing Janet's old Albyn School, grocery shopping and fuel at Tesco, and dinner at Shepherd's Rest.

However, the day started off badly for Rob. He was somewhat shocked to see that his socks had an "L" for left and "R" for right - and he had put them on wrongly. We had not seen this before and it made us chuckle. It turns out it felt better once he swapped them around! Who would have thought?!

The online directions for our chosen walk of today - Brimmond Hill - indicated that parts of it was almost impassible due to gorse bushes. As it turned out someone had been through with large equipment and cleared the way - rather violently if you ask us.

On our way up the slope we also have to walk past more ferns than you could shake a stick at.

Following the blue and black markers brought us to the top, and the view towards Aberdeen and the North Sea was beautiful and it was a sunny day to boot.

While not fans of ferns, we did enjoy a good selection of flowers on Brimmond Hill.

We were amused to see large tussocks along the path - and some of them having developed a clear bald-spot! Whatever next?

It was nice to see that the heather is blooming already.

We came across an old bonfire - possibly gone wrong. Personally, we feel that rule number one is to NOT burn the trail markers, and rule number two should be to avoid burning items outside the stone ring. Both rules were broken .... and ....

... this is what happens: evidence of bush fire on 12 May 2024 taking out 100 square metres of gorse and heather.

At the top of the hill we found a trig marker - with a phone number to call should you find it damaged.

There was also a monument for those who died in the First World War. We're not sure what the monument is: possibly a flagpole stand?

Rob is always excited to find stairs - and sometimes he takes the stairs even when he doesn't have to!

At one of the stiles we had to go through we found an interesting solution to "how many keys do we need to distribute to authorized users". In this case they just let all authorized users install their own lock - in a daisy-chain.

At the top of the hill we found a pole with a flag for Aberdeen Football Club. With the inscription "Stand Free" on the Scottish Flag with the red rampant lion on a field of yellow as the Royal Banner of Scotland. The flag did not appear to have been put there officially, so maybe it will be taken down soon.

It wasn't a long walk today but we still had a tea break at the top of the hill.

The return path down the hill was at a gentle slope and so far it was not overgrown with gorse bushes.

We did cross a clearly marked Shell pipeline, which shouldn't have been a surprise since we are in Aberdeen, which claims to be "the oil capital of Europe".

We returned to find Percy at the car park making friends with another Peugeot Partner. There was a dog bowl outside the car so we were hopeful. We had to leave so we did not meet the doggie.

We wanted to do a load of laundry before travelling to Loch Lomond tomorrow. Sadly there wasn't a laundrette near our hotel, so we picked one downtown Aberdeen. We ended up at Speedy Washers on Baker Street. We don't have any photos becuase it was very efficient. Pay with card using a QR code, 30 minute wash, 30 minute dry - done!

Next we did some shopping at Argos (beard trimmer for Rob) and Decathlon (additional guy ropes for the tent) and Tesco (groceries and diesel).

Hild's mum, Janet, went to Albyn School for Girls in Aberdeen in 1952/53, so we wanted to see if we could find it.

We found the current Albyn School, but it is no longer a girl's school. The buildings look quite modern so we suspect that it doesn't look like what Janet can remember. It was fun to have a look anyway.

It had been such a productive day that we treated ourselves to "a bit of moo" - meaning a filet steak. Hild chose baby potatoes while Rob chose fries. It was delicious! We were happy to find that they had mini-slices of deserts. So we had tea, coffee, strawberry cheese cake, and sticky toffee cheese cake. Yummy!

Coming up: Loch Lomond

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