For our second proper day in Aviemore we thought we’d venture a little further afield and visit Loch Morlich and the Glenmore visitor centre using the number 34 bus which stops outside the visitor centre. The visitor centre is a little shop and a cafe and it sells maps of the cairngorm mountains which, to be honest, are shit. You’re much better off sticking to the OS map for Aviemore as long as you fold it appropriately before you get most of the way along the trail!! There’s also a reindeer centre but it’s closed in the winter so I have no idea how much fun it can be. Just down the road from the visitor centre is a little ski/snow stuff shop that also has a cafe and a dry ski slope that’s about 10 meters long. Needless to say we didn’t partake in any snow based sports there. The loch has lots of trails going around it and is pretty well signposted except some of the colours have washed away a bit. We just attached 2 or 3 of the trails together and skirted the edge of the loch.

It was pretty windy and the first part of the loch we came across looked like a beach by the sea with all the suft the wind was kicking up. We stayed here literally long enough to take a photo and then got out of the screaming gale force winds :)

Once again the paths are good, though at some points you really have to stick to the trail rather than try and make your own way as there are a few hidden streams around. They seem to have done quite a bit of tree felling for whatever reason, which certainly did nothing to halt the wind.

Once at the bottom of the loch it becomes clear that it’s more of a pond in the middle of a river as you cross the bridge back to the road over a torrent of water making its way back down to Aviemore from the mountains.

Up the road a bit we found a picnic spot to eat our lunch and we were promptly surrounded by a large number of ducks who all seemed to want a piece of the sandwich. These ducks were then attacked in what can only be likened to a gang raid by another group of ducks from further up the lake. We left before any feathers flew.

The final part of the walk is actually by a path on the other side of the road where we saw another person!! This brought the tally of people seen on our 2 walks to about 8 with almost as many dogs.

A quick bus ride later and we’re back in time to watch Diagnosis Murder :)