Cairngorm Adventures!

My lovely friend B decided that for her birthday she would love to go up to the Cairngorms for a weekend of snowy adventures. In the end there were 18 of us that wanted to throw ourselves down a snowy mountain at speed (or at least fall over a lot in the snow).

Everyone was heading up after work but the Boy and I had the day off so we decided to start our adventure early. We finished packing, did a quick supermarket trip for supplies (and to ensure we had food in the house for Sunday). The first challenge was filling up the (borrowed) car with petrol, I couldn't for the life of me work out how to open the flap that gives access to the fuel cap. I called mum and soon got shouted out over the loud speaker for using my mobile phone (cue everyone in the petrol station glowering at me). I then got shouted at again when I went in to pay despite trying to explain that I'm not a driver, it's a borrowed car and I'm never in a petrol station so I didn't know.

Our first stop was Pillars of Hercules in Fife and the subject of my blip. It was a delightful little place, very busy for late Friday lunchtime. They have an organic farm and deliver veg boxes all around fife. There's also a nice woodland that you can walk around. There is lots of wood in the interior that is all from the estate and local artists made pressed glass windows for the toilets. I'd love to visit again in the summer when it's green and we can explore. They did really tasty food and a good cuppa, I suggest a visit if you're passing.

As we headed on up the M90/A9 we saw a notice telling us the A9 was closed at Dalnacardoch and we should use an alternate route. This is the point I should mention that our adventure was relying entirely on a print out of google map directions as we don't have SatNav and the petrol station incident meant I forgot to buy a road map. I couldn't get the mobile internet working on my phone so we fell back on calling someone with the internet and trying to get them to find it on google maps from my recalled spelling of a sign we saw for a few fleeting moments.

Thankfully before Pitlochry we managed to not only find out that it would effect us and there are no alternate routes but also checked the traffic news and found out we wouldn't be able to go further than Blair Athol anyhow.

With snow falling, we pulled into the first place we came across, the Blair Athol distillery. We'd planned an adventure so why let a road closure stop us, we'd just kill some time going on a tour of the distillery. Shame we were 15 minutes too late! We had a look at their exhibits and wandered over to the shop. As we'd missed the tour, the nice lady gave me a glass of their Blair Athol whisky, we joined their Friends of the Classic Malts to get entry to other distilleries and having just this morning mentioned I should treat myself to a nice new whisky, I did just that.

From there we drove into Pitlochry, found a car park and attempted to find somewhere to get a cup of tea in a rainy, cold tourist town in the middle of winter. We eventually found somewhere but it was closing at 4:30pm. Quick cup of tea, a call to my sister to attempt to find out what was happening on the road was overheard by the waitress who brought us their wifi code. As they closed up she told us the pub across the road was very nice and did hot food and drinks and free wifi.

We hoped we wouldn't be in the pub too long but slowly it filled up with tired travelers looking for food and waiting it out. Around 6pm we updated the Edinburgh crew who were just about to set off. By 6:30pm we'd decided we might as well eat, we'd have to eventually and we'd be risking Aviemore being closed before we got there.

At 7:30pm the crash had been cleared but there was still a snow gate closure. We decided to chance it anyhow and head to Blair Athol and see if we could go further. We soon hit standing traffic. Whilst we waited a police car went flashing past. Soon we were moving again. It was very slow going. For about an hour we were generally moving between 20 - 40 mph.

Exhausted we reached the hostel by about 9:30pm. No reception to inform others but traffic must have cleared on the way up as they weren't much longer after us.