Leanachan

31 December, the shortest day is past but today seemed darker than ever.

We have a lot of folk coming round this evening and key to a relaxing get together is our Bruce and Caley being well exercised earlier in the day. You really, really don't want two labradors with surplus energy helping you to entertain.

The dreadful cold still hangs over our house but I got to take the guys to Leanachan. While there are infinite permutations of paths and tracks in this huge plantation we tend to to take one of two routes, either east or west from the end of the public road at Leanachan. We went west. The most notable aspect to the walk was simply how wet everything was. Wee ditches with normally a trickle of water in the bottom were invisible under big lagoons of flood water which engulfed tree trunks. (As an aside a tree expert explained to me a while ago the reason that alder trees are so dominant along the sides of burns in the highlands is that they are one of the few plants with roots that can withstand long periods of immersion in water and indeed it was all scrubby alder within the flooded areas)

Both dogs had their usual swims but I was quite concerned for them in the swollen streams. Clearly they had no worries.

As I type M has just come down stairs to show me option 1 of 2 for what she might wear tonight. I thought she looked lovely.

Anyway, this is the view north over the empty marshland, huge in its own right, but wholly enclosed within Leanachan Forest, and you can see the Loch Lochy Munros in the distance. Caley is at some nonsense in the right foreground.

Option 1 it is.

Have a Good New Year!