Sunday, August 5

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

Our 50th cache hide had to be a little special and as I am also getting bored with searching for urban caches, I wasnt about to make this one. In fact I don't think I will bother hiding anymore in urban situations, unless somewhere really interesting.
I was looking for some scrabbling experience as I had failed at getting to the top of Stac Polly and Sgurr nan Gilliean.
I found this in a book on walk and scrammbles in the Cairngorms, There wernt many as it was, for such a large area. The Stuic a rocky ridge on the Locknagar Massif, had been climbed way back by none other than Lord Byron. Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know was a phrase used by Lady Caroline Lamb to describe Lord Byron and as a child, lived for a short time at a farm adjacent to the South Deeside Road just east of Ballater. He spent some of his early childhood in Aberdeen where he attended the grammer school. He is reputed to have climbed The Stuic with a clubfoot and the time growing up in the area feature in some of his poetry, in paricular the area of Lochnagar
I was a long walk in and not that exciting once I had left the ancient forsest, mostly moor and bog. I climbed it from loch nan Eun and got the most way up, them my way was barred, in hindsite I think I should have been further over too the right, but I made my way off to the side and up a scree gully for the final few fifty feet or so. I think I will probably have another go at it sometime, as I still need the scrambling practice and this isnt supposed to be that difficult.Looks like you can come off Lochnagar quite easily down to the Loch, then climb it, wants to be a good dry day as that granite is slippy when wet, unlike the gritty grabbo of Skye.

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