Glen Tilt - In the bleak midwinter

I'll have to have words with whoever wrote those words because I have never found midwinter to be bleak. Just the opposite. Is there anything more beautiful than the landscape's details picked out in a thick, hoary frost or softened with a blanket of fresh snow? Or anything more wonderful than the golden light of a low December sun filtering through the bare branches of a winter wood?

I wandered through a winter wood last weekend. It was good to be out for the first time this winter in snow. I had a long amble round Glen Tilt. The cloud was low so it wasn't worth it to be up high. The several inches of fresh powdery snow already blanketing the glen were added to throughout the day by gently falling flakes. The red deer were as numerous in the glen as the snowflakes. I have never seen so many deer as I saw that day. 

Huge herds flowed across the snow-covered hillsides and formed long, snaking lines on the ridges. It really made me think of the great wildebeest or caribou migrations that we see on telly. I think I realised for the first time that these movements of red deer are a similar migration as they are forced to move lower in bad winter weather to find shelter and food. Everywhere there were exposed patches of grass and moss where they had scraped back the snow in search of meagre grazing.

I scraped back the snow myself to dig out a small spot for the tent, then grazed on hot soup and a roll before climbing up a ridge above to be amongst the deer. Their musky smell hung everywhere in the chill air. There was no colour to the afternoon. It barely got light except for a brief moment when the sun posted some rays through a narrow letterbox of sky between the snow-covered hillside and the snow-laden clouds. 

Snowflakes continued to fall into the evening and I wondered if I would be snowed-in come morning.

I needn't have worried. Overnight the weather front shifted, the snow turned to rain and the fluffy powder of yesterday turned to slush. I walked out of the glen in heavy rain, enjoying the shelter of the trees. I counted five red squirrels and a stoat, enjoyed the endless twitter of finches in the hedgerows and warmed my soul with the sight of Blair Atholl's Christmas tree whose colourful lights sent out a warm glow in the half dark afternoon. The day was grey and cold and wet but it wasn't bleak. 

Fact File

More photos on Flickr: click HERE
Start/finish: Blair Atholl train station served by Edinburgh/Glasgow to Inverness trains.

Map: OS Landranger 43

Route: Turn right on exiting the station and just after the entrance to the campground pick up a small path that leaves the pavement to the left and passes in front of the field to go down to the River Tilt. Follow this path and any walkers' signs up Glen Tilt. Just before Gilbert's Bridge take the track that goes up to the left and follow it to a gorgeous stone bridge over a waterfall at grid ref NN888713. Just above here are the ruins of some shielings and I pitched the tent here and continued walking up the ridge above. Next day I walked back to Gilbert's Bridge, crossed it, turned right and then soon followed a walkers' sign to the left. This gives a different way back to Blair Atholl and is a lovely track, high above the glen, that passes through open birch woods. It eventually joins a small road where you should turn right to go steeply downhill back to Blair Atholl. 

Info: "In the Bleak Midwinter" was originally a poem written by Christina Rosetti in the mid 19th century which subsequently became a Christmas carol.

Blair Atholl - Bikes, blizzards and Belgians

I can’t say I was looking my best at the weekend. My hair was matted like fuzzy felt under a hat under a helmet; my jaws were so frozen that I could hardly speak or eat my chocolate-coated peanuts; and the biting cold winds had given me a face like a pizza. And to top it all my Belgian lover had arrived for a spot of romancing.

A plan had already been in place with my friend to bike a circuit through the Gaick Pass and return over the Drummochter Pass. But the best laid plans aft gang agley and winter, snow and blizzards returned to Scotland to scupper this one. Not to be put off we set out biking up through Glen Tilt, today a deserted Arctic landscape where drifts of sculpted snow grew to several feet in the wind and clouds of spindrift reduced our view to just a few feet of the track ahead. 

Anybody seeing us setting out from Blair Atholl with bikes and camping kit might have thought we were a little bit crazy. And maybe we were! But sometimes you have to struggle and take on a challenge to feel good and alive and invigorated. And so we battled through the snow on our bikes, enjoying the brief moments when short sections of trail passed through the shelter and calm of the Glen Tilt woods. The only imprints in the fresh, powder snow were three bicycle tracks and the footprints of hare, deer and pheasants.

In the late afternoon we pitched our tents in a little copse of trees, sheltered from the worst of the icy blasts, where snowflakes fell gently to the forest floor and a little robin visited our campsot for crumbs of cheese. We risked life and limb, or at least a severe dunking, picking our way over snow and ice-covered rocks in the gorge of the river to collect water for cooking. But boy, did I enjoy my cup of hot tea that evening!

Next day we biked another track out onto the open wind-scoured, snow-blasted moors and pushed our bikes through deep snow before abandoning them and walking on a little further. In a brief moment of sunshine the light illuminated the slopes of Beinn Dearg ahead and we soaked up the beauty of the winter landscape before jumping back on our bikes for a fast descent to Blair Atholl. I finished the weekend off being wined and dined at a restaurant where my margherita pizza looked just like my face.

Fact file

Start/finish: Blair Atholl

Route: The track north through Glen Tilt is beautiful at any time of year and you can make a loop by going up the east side and returning on the west. In good conditions it's an easy biking route with nice picnic spots. We camped in the trees near Gilbert's Bridge. Our second route took us out on the track to Beinn Dearg with quite a bit of climbing.

Tip: If you want to give a Belgian man an authentic Scottish cultural experience, take him to the Atholl Arms Hotel in Blair Atholl, buy him a Scottish beer and sit him in front of the roaring peat fire!

Glen Tilt - The silence of snow

esIce crystals showered down from the inside of my tent as I unzipped the outer door. I knew that it would be snowing even before I looked out. It was so quiet and even the noise of the rushing river was blurred and the only thing that muffles outside sounds in this way is snow.

My tent was pitched beside a partially frozen river at the foot of Beinn Mheadhonach, a humpbacked hill hidden away up Glen Tilt to the north of Blair Atholl. It’s not a spectacular hill but has long been a wee favourite of mine for its pretty approach walk and airy summit plateau, and on this visit, painted with a fresh coat of snow, it was looking irresistable. The previous day I’d enjoyed a gorgeous walk through Glen Tilt with my hillwalking buddy, Graham, after we’d arrived in Blair Atholl on a late night train and thrown the tents up in woods above the River Tilt. Despite the weak winter sun, the glen was gripped in ice and old, hard snow, making for treacherous walking.

 
The Glen Tilt track meandered through winter-bare woods above the river and crossed over frozen cascades on old stone bridges before emerging onto open terrain where up ahead patches of sunshine highlighted the contours on the snow-covered flanks of Beinn A’Ghlo. In the cold air crystals of thick, white frost grew on the trees, grasses and boulders, and might have grown on Graham given his slow speed after a long absence from the hills. My friend aside, there were few signs of life on the move, only a small herd of roe deer nibbling at the field margins and the occasional robin with feathers puffed up against the cold. The landscape was a still life in muted colours except for the russets of the old trackside bracken.

If we had continued walking north through Glen Tilt without breaking legs on the icy track, we would have eventually slid into Strathspey. Instead we left the main route and ate lunch in the sunshine with our backs against the broken walls of an old shieling before nervously shuffling along a slippy path barely the width of a boot on the side of a precipitous gorge. Icicles hung from the underside of the arch of an ancient stone bridge that crossed the next partially frozen tributary. On the far side there was a camp spot, just big enough for the two tents. It was a bitterly cold evening – my little zipper-pull thermometer dropped to -10 degrees at one point  – but, safe in the knowledge that nobody would be seeing me in my underwear any time soon, I was wearing very large, not very sexy, thick, woollen knickers and matching vest. I was oblivious to the temperature and cooked supper by torchlight with the tent wide open so I could marvel at the stars in the night sky above.

When I unzipped the tent next morning, yesterday’s sunshine had been replaced by steely-grey cloud and gently falling flurries. Nonetheless, we picked our way up Beinn Mheadhonach through deep snow banks on its leeward side, putting up mountain hares in their white winter coats and a flock of grouse. After a view-free, freezing few minutes on top, a quick descent took us back to the tents for a warming lunch before we packed up and braved for a second time the gorge path whose icy sections were now hidden by fresh snow. The path rejoined the main trail and headed back down the glen as flakes kept falling. Soon it was again enveloped by the winter woods and the crack of ice under footsteps was the only sound that broke the silence of snow.

For all the photos click here. 

Fact File
Start/finish: Blair Atholl Rail Station, regularly serviced by the Edinburgh/Glasgow to Inverness route
Map: OS Landranger 43
Route: Turn right out of the station and pick up the trail that follows the west bank of the River Tilt north – marked by yellow arrows much of the way. Stay on the west bank at Gilberts Bridge, continue north and just after the next bridge over a tributary, take the small path that splits northwest at Grid Ref NN 888 712. Cross the next bridge and ascend the south ridge of Beinn Mheodhonach (no difficulties). To vary the return walk retrace your steps to Gilberts Bridge, cross it and turn right down the main track but follow a small path signed to the left after a couple of hundred metres, which joins another trail back to Blair Atholl.
Tips: If you have spare time before your train home, the  Atholl Arms Hotel next to the station does meals, soup, hot drinks and (if you’re reading this in summer) cold alcoholic beveridges.!