Sunday 10 June 2007

The Silence Of The Woodland

Yesterday we went for another jaunt up Bennachie, this time ascending to the highest peak, Oxen Craig (after which Vikki's primary school house took its name), from the Back O' Bennachie car park (where I once camped during my Scouting days). It was a good walk and the weather was warm, but a drifting mist at the top cooled things down a bit and reduced visibility quite a bit.
On the way up, we noticed some interesting carvings - a rock set in a burn with the message "the tumbling of waters is the teeming of life" and a path of stones leading to a stone seat with the words "the silence", "of", "the woodland", "is", "the sound", "of", "calling birds". Very interesting, especially when walking backwards.
We also managed to save some mice that had got stuck in a barbecue bin and saw a bright green spider, a big bug thing, and a black millipede.
On the way home, we stopped to see the Maiden Stone which looked more worn than we remembered but I think that's more to do with the erosion of our memories than the stone.

Here's Vikki and the boys getting ready to start the walk.
This is the men at the top.And here's a panorama taken from Little Oxen Craig.
There are some more photographs on the Picasa ablum. Click below to see them.


2007-06-09 Oxen Craig

8 comments:

Ian said...

Was it a bit sunny? You all appear to have your eyes closed in most of the pictures.

Ian said...

Your long backwards blog post title appears to have broken your RSS feed by the way. I actually had to visit to see that there was an update.

shanksi said...

That was my sneaky trick to get you to visit so you would click on my Google Ads and earn me some money!

I didn't realise we had our eyes closed. Might just be the camera - the AF seems a bit off these days.

Ian said...

I didn't notice the ads first time, but since the new Blogger allows you to put your ads on each of the individual post pages I would imagine I shall click on them whether I visit the front page or jump directly to the new content through my Live Bookmark. Especially if, as today's does, they promise tomato growing secrets. Although, I didn't get past the first sentence about "one-armed farmer" that's not your fault. You're not responsible for their ridiculous content, only the delivery of my eyeballs. Your other ad gave me a couple of nice runs in my area. None close enough for me to consider, but a useful link all the same

shanksi said...

I decided to keep the ads quite subtle - possibly a mistake in this business, especially as the terms and conditions (as I understand them) say I can't actually ask people to click on them and I'm not supposed to spend all day clicking on them myself.
I like the sound of the tomato one - I'll be looking out for that.
So far, I've apparently made US$0.95 from 5 clicks. Not bad.
I think it should be possible to put the ads into the RSS feed but I think that might be getting too intrusive.

Ian said...

You read the T's and C's? Blimey...I knew the one about not clicking them myself. That would wrong. Obviously. Subtlety is good, I like what you did with them. 3 of those clicks were mine. You're welcome.

Jen said...

Holy cow, Vikki! You look fantastic! This running thing is suiting you fabulously!

What a great hike! I wish they had stuff like that near me in Texas. I mean, I know they have some awesome hills & stuff, but you have to drive a bit of a distance to get there. Nothing like your mountains, but they have a few hills here and there.

I love that "Maiden Stone"! Awesome!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the compliment Jen! I do feel running is the best exercise I've done for losing weight.
We are very lucky here in that we can climb hills after only a 45 min drive. I grew up in Inverurie (the town next to Bennachie) and my folks took us up there a few times a year. They also took us to see the Maiden Stone so it's nice to show our boys the same things.