Britain's Highest Life.Turns.?

Probably a short lived accolade (if true), but here we have Mrs L celebrating her seventh Munro - Glas Maol at a height of 1068m.

As we sat in Glenshee car park debating which hills to do Mrs L made the point that if this had been in the first week of our holiday we wouldn't have been there. It was raining (slightly) and the forecast was for heavy, possibly thundery showers if you're in the wrong place, but if you're in the right place you could get away with a dryish day. Well it wasn't the first week of our holiday, it was the last day and either the wind or the rain or both had kept us off the hills so we decided that today's objective was going to be Glas Maol & Creag Leacach.

Ignoring the more scenic approach to Glas Maol that starts 200m lower we headed up the very unscenic Land Rover track servicing the Meal Odhar ski tows and then finally a wee steep ascent onto the Glas Maol summit plateau. We then had two Munro "firsts". My "first" was that to the best of my memory this is the first time I've shared a Munro summit with a herd of sheep and Mrs L's "first" was her first summit that she reached not gasping for breath - a nice wander across the plateau allowing full composure to be recovered.

Now for what I'd promised to be just a gentle stroll to Creag Leacach as there are only gentle ups and downs between the two Munro summits. Unfortunately I'd forgotten about the stony summit of Creag Leacach and boulder hopping isn't exactly Mrs L's forte. However these obstacles were overcome and we stood atop of her eighth Munro. I did my Life.Turns. posing there, making sure I was out of sight of the other walker who arrived just after us, although the one a day rule will probably mean it remains unpublished.

Remember that 200m of ascent we'd saved at the start, well the downside of doing that was we weren't doing a round of the hills, more an out and back. I'd spied out what appeared to be a track that would save us having to re-ascend Glas Maol that cut across its western face and indeed we did find a sheep/deer track, but another of Mrs L's non-fortes is exposure and although there wasn't anything life threatening there were a few "bad steps" which made it a bit slow going. Fortunately we weren't in any hurry as the forecasted bad weather was nowhere to be seen and it was actually a lovely sunny clear day to enjoy the views (just not the ones straight down the steepish west face).

We were in even less of a hurry when I got the big camera out and was snapping a group of a dozen ravens. Then I spied a large bird taking off, snap, snap, snap as it flew low straight towards us. It was a young eagle and looking at the photos now you can clearly make out it's got two light blue wing tags marked with either "N" or "Z". A bit research to be done there and hopefully may be able to find out the history of the bird.

Finally we reached the Land Rover track once more and wandered back to the car as threatening dark clouds started to form over the hills, but no thunderstorms and no heavy rain. In fact having just got out of the shower I can report that my wee bald patch is just a wee bit tender having caught a wee bit of sun - that wasn't part of this mornings forecast.

Edit: Update on the White-tailed (sea) eagle sighting - Many thanks for passing on this sighting. This is turquoise tag Z a 2009 male released in Fife in August last year, he is approx 14 months old. Turquoise is the colour for all our 2009 releases. We have had regular sightings of this bird (including trying to catch amphibians!) around Loch Davan (NJ 441007 - near Dinnet, Aboyne) over the last few months, but its is not unusual for the birds to wander large distances in a day.

For more information on the East Scotland project please see the project blog

Bird Z was named Norbett by Donibristle school.