Glen Coe and The Cairngorms

Glen Coe represents some of the finest scenery that Scotland has to offer with its huge mountains and gargantuan, green valleys. The film opens with an overview of my Scotland 2023 tour route, a 1913 mile journey, (including the drive there and back), followed by some of the most scenic highlights from the 10 day trip. It was raining heavily when I reached Glen Coe early on in the trip, but once the rain had cleared, the mighty and iconic mountain Stob Dearg came into view. And so I flew over to its slopes to get a closer look before panning around to see the vastness of Rannoch Moor and then descended to a spectacular Highland stream with waterfalls. We then progress to the splendid Pass of Glencoe, one of the most stirring sights of Scotland. Next, the film moves on to my epic 2½ day, 40 mile hike through the Cairngorms National Park, starting at the Linn of Dee woodland car park. It's a 10 hour hike on day 1, walking to and through the Lairig Ghru before finally arriving at the edge of the Rothiemurchus forest at dusk and pitching camp one. Day 2 started with a scenic walk through the Glenmore Forest Park, around the shores of Loch Morlich, a look at Glenmore Lodge and a glimpse of the very picturesque An Lochan Uaine (The Green Loch). As I rounded the most northern point of the hike route, it was blowing an absolute hooley, and at that stage I was still of the opinion that I'd taken a good route; the alternative being a route over the Cairngorm Plateau. But the Strath Nethy turned out to be 'hiking hell' as the footpath on the map did not translate to any visible path on the ground, and so time was lost stomping through dense heather and crossing streams trying to find any evidence of any kind of path whatsoever. After several miles of this, the southern half of Strath Nethy was more navigable, albeit tough going, and my 14Kg rucksack was something I would certainly like to have done without. Reaching The Saddle in the heart of the Cairngorms at 6pm, it was only another mile or so of boulderous, tough terrain to get to the 'Fords of Avon' refuge bothy hut, where I stayed the night, before the final 11 mile slog back to the forest car park the next morning, where I had half a giant bar of chocolate waiting. Filmed in 4K