Glen Einich

Caley got his early morning walk. Well maybe not crack of dawn exactly but a good early start for a holiday day.

Bruce and I have previously walked on this route and I have also used this approach on my bike many years ago to gain swift access to a couple of massive mountains on this west wing of the Cairngorms.

Glen Einich at the start is very tame and civilised. Clearly the first mile or so is used by many dog walkers as there were considerable distractions to Caley as he raced from tree to tree for quick sniffs. Once we had left the scents behind his nose only wanted to smell the fresh air coming from the next crest or rounding the next corner. The transformation in the landscape in an hour is quite notable.
I had given myself four hours for the total trip (including blip stops) and at the outer most point we reached I could see a mini rain storm in the hollow up ahead which holds Loch Einich. It looked like I could reach out and touch it but a quick check on the map said it was still 4km away; another five miles round trip on top of what we had already done. Another day Caley.

I had clearly "wasted" a lot of time taking pictures on the way up because my brisk paced, blip free, reversal to Coylum bridge took about half an hour less than I had anticipated.

I had taken a few pieces of fruit to keep me going and all were consumed. Caley is reluctant to eat his breakfast too early just now so that was carried in the rucksack too. It was fed in handfuls to him mid morning. Goodness he was hungry and he wasn't the only one.

Back at the house there was a quick turnaround and we went to the brilliant Mountain Cafe for lunch. It really is superb.

A technical Nikon photo comment:

In big wild landscape shots I am acutely aware of bright zones of sky "clipping"; totally burning out to white and no amount of photoshop can recover the lost data. I had a heavy tripod with me and bracketed 5 shots 2 over and 2 under at one stop steps. The under exposed shots were of most need in this respect but my best attempts were not enough. On review the very pitfall I had tried to avoid was staring me in the face. I duplicated, within seconds, the process on the same scene with the wee compact (in fact just one over and one under) and the image was entirely salvagable with little effort.
The Nikon is really superb in other respects but I really struggle with it on bright panels sky. Any comments out there?