Meet Report

15th to 17th August 2003 - Ballater

Sunshine, a nice breeze and no midges - a great start to the last camping meet of the year. A few turned up on the Friday night and it was especially good to see Margaret who'd travelled all the way from York, and Eleanor who hadn't been on a meet for quite some time.

Saturday dawned brightly and although dogged by intermittent showers, showed good promise of a reasonable day. Iain MacLeod went off to bag some Munros near Loch Muick, everyone else wanted to climb Lochnagar, and I settled for a lovely little Graham called Mona Gowan, climbed from Glen Fenzie (promounced Fingie!). For the first time ever, I ran into a grouse shooting party with the estate manager whistling frantically at me to "get that dog on a lead". He actually turned out to be entirely reasonable and was happy to see people on the hills. What he objected to was people using the shooting butts as toilets and breaking all the windows at the nearby lodge - I thought he had every reason to be annoyed.

Despite the fact this was the end of August, Ballater as ever was busy and we were lucky to get a table at the local pizza restaurant - very good food and equally good wine.

Sunday wasn't quite so good weather-wise, but Corbetts and Munros were climbed. Can't believe we'll be back to hut meets again in September - where has the year gone?