Press announcement: There's one born every minute! We have a new member of the Leaping Badgers team in the form of Murray Whyte. He joined us for a short stroll out towards Ben Alder this weekend.
After five days of blazing sunshine with the clouds as scarce as the president of a multinational bank at a G20 protest and the rocks about to split from the heat we set out for a twenty five mile walk into Ben Alder. Needless to say it started lashing down with rain as soon as we left the house with the kind of intensity that would have put a smile on Noah's face.
Being kitted out with the latest in waterproof clothing we stayed dry for nearly seven minutes. After that it was similar to being in the shower, except cold, and we were fully dressed and there was no shampoo. Colum and I calculated that twenty five miles is the equivalent to walking up and down an average length bath 13,000 times.
Murray was able to track our position with his GPS mobile phone, until the batteries gave up. Colum's watch wasn't faring much better and was reluctant to move past 9:15. We twigged that something was wrong when the combined calculation from GPS and watch put our average walking speed at 25 miles per hour - which is virtually unachievable driving down the A9 let alone walking along forest track.
By the time we stumbled back towards Dalwhinnie it was noted that every single person that passed us was on a bike, wussies!
The bothy at Culra is a great place to stop for lunch if you're passing. With several rooms and a couple of wood burning stoves, as well as a huge shovel to bury your leavings, you couldn't ask for more. The service wasn't brilliant though - still you can't have everything. It was a roof over our heads and respite from the inclement conditions. Train in the wet and hope for the dry, is my motto and I propounded it several times on the long walk out until threats of physical violence shut me up.
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