More Walks With My Brother

On another day we accompanied Dad to Pitfour Lake.
As you may be aware from the Australia trip Dad is an experienced birdwatcher. This walk illustrated to him that he needs a hearing test as Daran and I were identifying calls that he was unaware of. Ah well!
The lake is a fishing pool and has nice paths to wander around. Its a popular site with swans, ducks, geese and people.
Dad left us there and we walked back along the old rail line to Maud. We diverted to Deer Abbey a ruin of a 12 century Cistercian building. It’s enclosed in a walled area and very peaceful.
These walks were easy level and accessible but, we hardly saw anyone.

Aberdeenshire is peppered with stone circles and I know I mentioned this before on a prevoius post. It shows this area was quite populated in the past. I wonder if it was during a climatically warm period because its cold and bleak here in the winter.
On this trip Daran and I visited two circles
Firstly, Aikey Brae atop a hill which has had all the trees around it cut down now so the veiws are lovely. The day we visited the skylarks were singing and the sun shining. This is one of the best of these little circles and you can read about in here:
https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/deer/aikeybrae/index.html
Here we first encounter the first of painted pebbles! My mum had mentioned these and I wasn’t sure what she meant but here on the recumbant stone was a pebble painted like a strawberry. I supose its littering but there was something sweet about it.
Then we had a 3 mile walk to Louden Wood stone circle. This one had a secret feel to it, snuggled and enclosed in a conifer forest. If I didn’t have the Ordinance Survey App I’d have had difficulty finding it. Sure enough there were more painted pebbles!

After this walk Daran took me to a secret place, near to Brimmond Hill, Aberdeen. I wondered where we were going. We had a confusung walk through gorse and broom. The broom is brighter but the gorse filled the air with a coconut scent. It was glorious, we decended into a boggy area where the ground bounced as we walked on it. We seemed to be going in a circle but then we came across a beautiful silent pool. The water was clear but dark with peat (I’m guessing). There were damsel flies and willow warblers in abundance. This was Daran’s secret place and it is beautiful.
I asked him if he had swam here, and he had but he said the bottom was very reedy and he thought it wasnt a good idea. We sat and had our lunch before making our mysterious way back to the mordern world.