We spent a good night in Corrour bothy, updated the bothy book and drank most of our whisky. Managed to get the scraps of coal lit but Quiller’s plan for drying out our boots proved to be extremely optimistic.
It’s easy to sleep well after a hard day of walking and my body seemed to have got used to the effort as I didn’t have the same level of cramps and aches that I did after day one. We’d also learnt now to hang all our food up out of the reach of mice.
Breakfast was the standard coffee, granola and powdered milk but I really enjoyed it as I did every breakfast. It makes a big difference if you can look forward to your meals, something that was emphasised when our bothy companion chose to eat his packet of pasta cold, despite having just made himself a hot cup of tea. Difficult to understand that decision.
The original plan for the day had been to head round to the east out of the Lairig Ghru, towards Derry Lodge but we’d learnt that the bridge there had been washed away and fording rivers at the start of the trip had been a real hassle. So instead we decided to follow the pass down towards White Bridge and then across to the Linn of Dee. The walk would be less interesting and challenging but definitely doable, unlike the original plan. Hopefully after the Linn somewhere the river would be high enough for us to get the boats out and float down towards Braemar.
It was a pretty overcast and wet day but we appreciated that with the ridiculous sunburn we all had. We were also looking forward to walking on more solid ground again, I know Quiller had done all the falling over in snow he needed to.
It was a pretty uneventful walk down to White Bridge and then an easy walk along the forestry trail to the Linn of Dee. Felt good though to be walking on more solid ground as we kept watching the river for when we could put the boats in.
Getting down to the Linn of Dee and an actual road again felt quite an achievement and we said goodbye to our bothy companion who was planning to walk along the road to Braemar and get the bus. I’m glad he had our path to follow coming through the pass and we all got through safely.
The Linn of Dee is definitely a portage, trying to get through there would be suicidal, but not far downstream we decided to get in the boats. The river was probably high enough and we were definitely tired enough of carrying the packs. This transition seemed to take ages as Rob and I managed to do everything in the wrong order and just faff around.
The river probably wasn’t technically high enough but the packrafts proved again their durability and also their manoeuvrability as we picked a path downstream between the rocks. We found a suitable place to stop and camp near Victoria Bridge outside Inverey. It was obvious from the many fire-blackened stone circles that lots of people had taken advantage of Scotland’s enlightened wild camping laws and stayed there by the river. There were some fallen trees for firewood (to use in an existing fire mark, not sure if we would have made a new one), it was flat, there was water from the river – a perfect spot. What wasn’t perfect was that we were pretty much out of whisky by this point.
This would be the last night spent out on the trip though and it was good to finally put up the tents and tarps that we’d carried all this way. A party of three is a bit awkward with a two man tent so I stretched out under the tarp. Looking back at this now, my tarp pitching skills have definitely improved, don’t know why I’ve given myself no headroom there, even though it was quite windy.
We’d walked through from Aviemore and seen the river grow from a tiny trickle at the top of the Lairig Ghru to the power of the Linn of Dee and next day we would raft it as far as we could go. Our whisky passports we’d got at Dalwhinnie had Lochnagar as one of the stops which seemed eminently achievable the next day. No walking – just packrafting.
