Independent overland travel through Africa in a Unimog called Moglet

So in a much happier frame of mind having been released early, we headed up the A9 then the A90 to a little village called Tarfside. We stopped on the way to have a look at a couple of forts Jason had spotted on the OS map. Catherhuns they were called, a Brown one and a White one, although I'm not sure whats the significance of the colours??

The access road to it was a little tight and wiggly, and steep enough for Moglet to be down to single figure speeds, but we got there in the end. And just in time too - practically within minutes of us arriving, it started to snow! :-) We hopped into the back and put on the thermals (I had no idea just how biting the wind could be here - my thermals are my new best friends!), then trotted up the White one. Having seen a fair few fort remains in my time, I was kind of expecting the usual grassy mound with a few indistinct lumps and bumps, interspersed with the occassional stone footing poking out here and there. What I didn't expect was thousands and thousands of stones piled up several feet deep, in massive concentric rings! As with so much of this trip so far though, the scenery in combination with the weather is the real star.

Pitstop over, we carried on to our real destination, our first deliberate 'wild camp' of the trip. Tarfside was the name of the last village in a stretch of road, which eventually petered out about 8 miles later in a public car park. The road there was lovely, proper twisty stuff, with a coach coming straight for us at one point! Jason managed to squeeze us past with I'd say about 2inches to spare between our wing mirrors, and we carried on to our home for the next night or two.

The plan for the next day was to follow a route described in one of the (many!) walking books we've picked up, with some waterfalls as our final destination. As is often the case, the reality of the geography didnt quite match the words in the book, but even so, the walk itself was stunning, definitely my favourite of the trip so far. And waking up to snow was the icing on the cake, it turned the scenery into exactly what you'd expect the hills in the Cairngorms to look like during winter. On the way back we reached a point where we had a tough decision to make - we could either head home the way we'd come out (which involved battling through knee-high heather covered in snow for about an hour - very tiring for already tired thighs) or taking our boots off, rolling up the trousers and wading through knee deep freezing water to cross a ford about 30feet across. Who on earth comes up with these bright ideas??!! Naturally we went for the wading option, and I can honestly say that my feet have never been in so much pain in all my life! I'm not sure what hurt more - the stones on the bottom (I foolishly assumed the cold would make my feet numb), or rubbing the circulation back into my toes on the other side! Jason was surprised that I had a bit of a sense of humour failure for a few minutes, or at least until my feet turned from blue back to pink, but I think its more weird for him to carry on running about in bare feet on the other side of the ford so he can take photos of footprints in the snow! But there you go...

On the way back to Moglet we stopped off to have a look at the Queens Well. She (Victoria) and the hubby apparently stopped off there with a hunting party to have a little sip from the spring at some point, so they built a monument to mark the spot...

We managed to make it back to Moglet just before dark, tired but happy. It had been a good walk, lots of lovely snow and fantastic surroundings, Jason even managed to spot a herd of 40 or so deer high up in the mountains, plus we were walking back to our free home for the night. What more could we ask? Happy as pigs in poo, we had showers and were fast asleep by 7.30pm!