A stroll in the Park.
Vickers Wellington HF816 on An Lurg.
(Distance covered = 11.8 mile, Ascent +500m)
And again in the dusk of Evening,
I shall find once more alone.
The dark water of the green loch, and the pass
beyond Ryvoan.
I visited this crashsite on day 3 of a week long Walking Holiday in Scotland while the Girls were away at the 2013 Canadian Highland dancing Championships. On day one it was blowing a bit of a hooley, so I had just done a few recces in preperation for the walks I was planning in the Aviemore area. If the very high winds wern't enough to discourage me from heading off up a Mountain I was also shattered from driving overnight up to Aviemore from Gatwick; where I had dropped the girls to catch their plane to Canada.
View across to the Cairngorms from The Queen's Forest.
After catching up on a bit of sleep, then checking out the starting points for my planned expeditions to Braeriach* and Ben Mcdui** it was about 4pm. I moved the car down to Glen More and parked beside the Reindeer Centre, where I was planning to start one of my walks a couple of days later to the remains of a Vickers Wellington on An Lurg. As the weather had improved considerably I went for a bit of a stroll, as according to my map there were several tracks heading into the Glenmore Forest Park from behind the Reindeer Centre. As I had nothing else to do I figured I'd have a walk around the woods, then in two days time I would know for sure which was the right track to follow.
The Queen's Forest, part of the Glenmore
Forest Park.
As it was such a lovely walk through the woods and because the weather was now quite pleasant I kept walking for a lot further than I had intended. I had spotted another track down in the bottom of the Glen so I decided I would continue to where the path I was on intersected with the one below, then return that way.
The path through the Queen's Forest heading towards Creag Nan Gall.
After reaching the intersection down in the bottom of the Glen I thought I may as well go a little further, to a small Loch that was marked on my map.
Above and below:-'An Lochan Uaine' or The 'Green Loch'
Beside the small loch which was called 'An Lochan Uaine' there was a rather grand wooden bench that sat on a
timber veranda overlooking the Green Loch. The bench had a very evocative
poem engraved on it which summed up exactly how I felt at that moment.
I think I must have sat at that spot for well over an hour and when I left
I was a lot more at peace with the world than when I arrived.
The Ryvoan Pass.
After chilling at the Loch for way to long I figured it wouldn't hurt going a little further still, so I set my sights on the Ryvoan Bothy, just a little further up the pass. Just before I reached the Bothy I came to another intersection in the track, the Bothy was straight on but the way to An Lurg was to the right, so I turned right and walked a little farther still.
View south down Strath Nethy from the track to An Lurg.
By the time the failing light eventually persuaded me to turn back I was at the end of the Landy track, which was at at the base of An Lurg and more than three quarters of the way to the Wellington crashsite.
An Lurg, taken from about halfway between the end of the Landrover
track and the Ryvoen Bothy.
At the crashsite two days later. Remains of one of the Wellington's engines lying amidst broken
cylinders, pistons and exploded oxygen bottles, behind on the left is Bynack More
and off in the distance to the right of centre is Cairngorm.
