The full days pics are through a click HERE

Day 13 - The last day of work at Deanich / Alladale, tomorrow it will be off to the airport first thing in the morning! It was joyful to have a small lie in this morning. As we are going to go straight up the glen to work rather than going up to Alladale first we got an extra half an hour in bed.

It did mean that it was a little lighter when we got up this morning. Over the two weeks I have been here it has been getting progressively darker every morning until we are getting up in the dark at the moment. The day was overcast, but there was no rain, yet.

The usual requirements for breakfast - Porridge with Golden Syrup. We did not pack sandwiches today as we were planning on coming back to Deanich for lunch. We did take a small snack though, so I put in some sweets and some fruit.

Once we were all ready it was into the Land rover and up the glen to go and work on the path. Today we were a little better prepared with spade, pick axe and spike. At least we now had something to help get the stones out of the ground. We started work on the path probably just after 9am.

As you can see from the pictures above the main path area that we were working on went from being very squidgey to quite good. This was due to a great team effort lugging first of all big rocks, then medium rocks and finally shingle over to the path from the Sperrig burn . Michael fortunately spotted a bag that was blowing around the hillside and even though it had a couple of fairly big rips in it, it sufficed for carrying the rocks.

When it got down to needing shingle I was standing in the burn with a shovel trying to get the smaller shingle from the bottom.

We stopped for a short break around 11 o'clock to catch our breath and eat various sweets, Mars bars and other energy (or is that calorie) packed food. Once we had time to relax and cool down a bit as lugging heavy rocks is warm work, especially as the sun was making it quite hot too, we went back to getting more shingle to get the footpath better.

When Chris was happy with the way the path was looking we packed up and went back to the Land rover. It was then decided that we should take the horses back down from the higher pasture to the pasture by Deanich as they would not be required for at least a week as the hill was at rest after the end of the Stag season.

Carol and Michael wanted to bring the horses back, so Chris and I decided to head back to Deanich to go and give it the end of stay clean. This basically involved going through all the communal areas - hall, lounge, dining room, kitchen and bathroom and giving it all a good thorough clean and polish.

We finished doing this about the same time as the others got back with the horses.

Once the horses were in the paddock and Chris and I had finished the last few bits of tidying we set to having lunch. Cheesy beans on toast for all except myself, I made a couple of omlettes. One for me and one which Chris and Michael shared. After lunch it was time to warm up a little in the lounge and play a few rounds of cards before heading off for the afternoons activities.

The afternoon was spent going to a new area and checking out a burn that will be running through the test enclosure area - a small update, it is now going to be an area enclosing approximately 1,000 acres which includes the river Alladale and this burn we were looking at - in order to get to the burn we had to go into a fenced area - this is done by going over a big set of steps.

Walking through the fenced off area is quite challenging. It is good that these is an amount of regeneration in there, certainly a reasonable number of saplings springing up, but it also has very deep moss and heather. The heather also has a lot of dead wood and is not very good quality for anything to graze on.

There were also some lovely shaped Scots pine in this area. The pine that are left in the glen are not typical of a Scots pine. They tend to be shorter and a lot more branches and twists in them as all of the tall and straight pines were cut down in times when they were cutting the lumber for planking.

When we reached the burn Chris demonstrated how to jump down across the burn which went very well. He then thought to demonstrate jumping back up across it. This unfortunately did not work quite so well.

Foolishly I also decided to have a go at jumping back up the bank. Chris did suggest that considering my knee this probably was not such a good idea. Unfortunately I did not heed this wise advise and ended up banging my knee on a rock in the bank, it is now sore again. At least this time I do have a bruise to look at so I know where and how I hurt it!

We carried on up most of the way following the burn and then out onto the top of the middle ridge and got our first view over the top into glen Alladale. Up on the top there are lots of pools of water and dead tree stumps from the Scots pine.

In glen Alladale there is a very interesting feature which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) - this is a wooded area growing on the scree slope of cairn Alladale. It is thought to be the only example of this in the UK.

We carried on walking around the hill to another stand of old Scots pine to see how they were doing and how much evidence there was of deer tracks. There was a reasonable amount of deer use and any sensible deer should have thought to stay in this area as it is not often stalked.

Now time was starting to tick on, so we walked down the hill, me slipping and sliding as usual - much to Carols amusement. Once we got back down to the road, Chris headed off back to retrieve the Land Rover whilst us volunteers carried on along the road towards Alladale. At one point Mich wanted to go and take some photos so Carol and I waited for him... then it started raining, reasonably hard... Chris turned up and there was not sign of Mich. Carol went up the path to look for him and could not see him, so we got in the Land rover and carried on round the corner. We had another quick look for him, but could not find him. Finally we headed up to the main Alladale lodge and there he was waiting for us!

We waited around at the lodge for a while, which gave us all a chance to catch up with email, then there was an idea to head off down to the pub to have a farewell drink with Jeff (one of the stalkers) who was returning to New Zealand. Unfortunately the Cleo had blown the top off the radiator and seized the engine, Helen went to show Chris a problem with the gearbox on the Peugeot and it seized and the Audi was in Teign having an MOT done - so no transport!

To make up for the disappointment we were given a nice big lasagne, extra cheese and a few beers to take back to Deanich.

To be honest this probably worked better as both Carol and I had packing to do.

Once at Deanich it was the usual routine - get the fires started, get the dinner on, eat dinner, have a bath, phone home, play cards, watch Fire fly - but not necessarily in that order. All in all it was a good evening - most people went off to bed whilst I was in the bath. When I came out the fire was still warm so I stayed up to watch a DVD and finally went to bed at about 1:15...

It was important to get some sleep, especially as we needed to be up at 6:45 to get out to go to the airport.

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