Scotland Hike

It all starts with the confusion of where we are supposed to go at what time, not quite familiar with airports. We were standing by the gate and were waiting for it to open. We got more and more nervous when the time got closer to the boarding and our gate did not open. During our waiting time we asked the staff by the gate next to ours when ours would open, they however didn't know. When we had two minutes left before our boarding the staff asked us; "Did you say you are going to Aberdeen? Your flight is boarding NOW and you are supposed to be at the gate! Give us your passports and run to your gate!".
And that's when we realised that we weren't at the gate but the passportcontroll...
We managed to get to our flight in time for take off, heading for Aberdeen.

Aberdeen has a lot of beautiful buildings and beautiful parks. But have you ever heard of "Fifty Shades Of Gray"? Aberdeen is literally that! Wherever you looked all buildings where built in different shades of gray... No colours anywhere!

Before we started to hike towards the highlands we stoped to ask for a good bookstore, but before we had the chance to get an answer a lady in her wheelchair screamed at us "This ain't no fucking parkinglot!" First we were a little shocked by the lady and frankly we laughed a bit, but the sidewalks was really narrow and very crowded.

Well outside of Aberdeen we noticed that the sidewalk we were walking on ended abruptly, but we kept on moving until we heard a man calling for us; "Your gonna die! dont walk there! Get in my car!".
He had seen us by the road, stoped his car on a driveway so he could call out for us.
He explained to us that the country roads in Scotland are dangerous because of the different interpretation of the speed limits. We were offered a ride to the closest camping site. But we ended up by camping in the mans garden, and had two lovely days resting up and dining with his family. Wonderfull people!

We decided to hike alongside river Dee since the family had given us maps and hints of what we could see and experience along the river. We saw plenty of castles and other cool structures like towers and churches. We also went lost and found a café in the middle of nowhere, wich had the best chocolate cakes ever! Actually we managed to almost never walk on the road we meant to, often we were on a road just next to it or even on the wrong side of the river. When we walked through Aboyne we found a tavern that welcomed muddy boots and dogs, we really need more of those. The tavern had a local ale we tried. Christian liked it but Cecilia prefer Guinness.

The nature in Scotland is gorgeous and rich on wildlife. It is true what they say, Scotland is very green but we didn't experience much of the rain. Everyone we met in Scotland actually apologized for the bad weather, wich we thought ironic since we enjoyed the weather alot.

At the airport:

Copenhagen to Aberdeen

Wonderful People

Aberdeenshire

The River and The Mountains

One of our favourit spots in Scotland was a place called "Burn O'Vat". This plce was formed after the last Ice Age, by an underwater stream. It was a spectacular sight and we decided to name our future dog after this place. The Cairngorm Mountains is another favourite place in Scotland.

To get there we decided to cross river Dee barefoot, to avoid soaking our boots. This spared us a days hike. However our boots were soaked anyways just before we were to climb the hills! Because on the other side of river Dee we had to jump through a bog on small tufts of grass.

It sounds pretty stupid now, but we had a great fun with it! We started hiking the mountains with sandals instead of our now soaked boots.

And at this point we realized that we had sandals! If we had used our heads it would have been much easier crossing the river and the bog, and we would have dry boots for the rest of the hike.

Up at the mountains we did not care much for the trails and worked our way through the fern. We met some hikers when we crossed a trail, who liked our adventourus spirits.

The hikers told us to follow the trail where they came from if we wanted to see the ruins, wich we did and from there on out we tried to follow the trails.

Spending three days in the mountains changed our perspective, we've always appreciated nature more than anything. But we experienced nature in another aspect, where wind could fold our tent at night and fog could make us nearly blind...

We lost the trails here aswell and followed the animal trails made by raindeers instead, and kept doing so around the mountain. When we finally came down on the other side of the mountains we saw signs warning us for the trails being flooded and ruined along the way, wich explained alot.

We made many mistakes during this trip, but we also learned a great deal!