The Aberlour-Fochabers section of the Speyside Way was my choice for a Christmas walk. I left my car in Fochabers and was transported by a friend of mine to Aberlour; then I had no choice but to walk back.<\/p>\n
I started at the car park by the Victoria Suspension Bridge, following the old railway along the river Spey towards Craigallachie, then bypassing the village and going to the Fiddich Park – long time ago a local train station. There the Speyside Way leaves the railway track, crosses the river Fiddich and climbs uphill along a narrow tarmac road, then follows that\u00a0for some time. Because of the frosty weather the night before there were streaks and sheets of frozen water –\u00a0extremely slippery – running across the surface here and there. A few miles later the route turned right and uphill onto a wide forest track, going across the slopes of Ben Aigan and Knockmore (the latter topped with a massive relay mast).\u00a0About 2.5 miles later I left the forest track going down the slope on the muddy path running along the ridge of a deep gorge. Soon the path levelled and went through the woodland and along the edge of the fenced fields, at times extremely wet and boggy. Eventually I left Ben Aigan woods going down towards the river Spey in Boat o’ Brig, where I crossed the B9103 and the railway under the bridge. From there I had to climb a surprisingly steep narrow tarmac road. Thankfully it levelled soon and provided a pretty comfortable though long walk along. About 1.5 miles before Fochabers the road went steeply down towards the bottom of a narrow gorge to cross a burn at the bottom and then climb steeply up. Extremely slippery streaks and sheets of ice covering the surface and the\u00a0darkness falling down made a dangerous mixture. Fortunately after that the home stretch was pretty straightforward, and very soon I was back in my car going home.<\/p>\n\n
[googlemaps https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/d\/u\/0\/embed?mid=1HYT8MhPj0QDizmC-8bHRMA4Nodc&w=640&h=600]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Aberlour-Fochabers section of the Speyside Way was my choice for a Christmas walk. I left my car in Fochabers and was transported by a friend of mine to Aberlour; then I had no choice but to walk back. I started at the car park by the Victoria Suspension Bridge, following the old railway along the river Spey towards Craigallachie, then bypassing the village and going to the Fiddich Park – long time ago a local train station. There the Speyside Way leaves the railway track, crosses the river Fiddich and climbs uphill along a narrow tarmac road, then follows that\u00a0for some time. Because of the frosty weather the night before there were streaks and sheets of frozen water –\u00a0extremely slippery – running across the surface here and there. A few miles later the route turned right and uphill onto a wide forest track, going across the slopes of Ben Aigan and Knockmore (the latter topped with a massive relay mast).\u00a0About 2.5 miles later I left the forest track going down the slope on the muddy path running along the ridge of a deep gorge. Soon the path levelled and went through the woodland and along the edge of the fenced fields, at times extremely wet and boggy. Eventually I left Ben Aigan woods going down towards the river Spey in Boat o’ Brig, where I crossed the B9103 and the railway under the bridge. From there I had to climb a surprisingly steep narrow tarmac road. Thankfully it levelled soon and provided a pretty comfortable though long walk along. About 1.5 miles before Fochabers the road went steeply down towards the bottom of a narrow gorge to cross a burn at the bottom and then climb steeply up. Extremely slippery streaks and sheets of ice covering the surface and the\u00a0darkness falling down made a dangerous mixture. Fortunately after that the home stretch was pretty straightforward, and very soon I was back in my car going home. [googlemaps https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/d\/u\/0\/embed?mid=1HYT8MhPj0QDizmC-8bHRMA4Nodc&w=640&h=600]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-long-distance-walks","category-outdoors","category-speyside-way"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}