Hiking Lochnagar and Wild Camping with our 2 Year Old

It is the most beautiful perfect day to be heading on an adventure which is what we are doing isn't it? Absolutely unreal. No wind, clear blue skies, cold and crisp. It was a beautiful frosty morning and we are heading wild camping. Doing a little like two-day mission. I'm gonna go up Loch Nagar which is a Munro. Here we're in the south east corner of Scotland of the Cairngorms and it's about 20 kilometers altogether but we're aiming to do 15k today, find the camping spot and then 5k back to the van tomorrow. So I'll show you the map at some point Little cache of lingonberries. Nice. Even though there's trees down in the valley on their own. That's where the boffy is. Yeah, Geldershaw and that's Balmoral in the background. We are just heading up towards the saddle now and now I think we're going to stop and have a little break before we head up onto the ridge. The wind is definitely picking up a little bit and it's definitely going to be chilly so we'll probably layer up and then head out to the summit after a break first. Is it snack time? Daddy's getting you down. Ready? Hey! Snack time. I've got ribita and salami. You want that? Okay you have that. Oh right okay I'll have that then, thank you. where you can choose from hundreds of templates to make a professional looking website. A little over a year ago I added a member area to my Squarespace website to give members access to all the online ramble guides that I've been building for over six years. While on this trip to Scotland we were researching to make updates to the Cairngorms guide and I've been adding all the amazing places we visited to the guide including this hike to Loch Ngar. I love how easy Squarespace makes it to build a new page on the website, add photos, text, links and buttons like this one. When I'm ready to make a page live I can just drag it into the membership content here and add a link at the top of the page. If you're interested in trying a Squarespace website for your business then you can head to squarespace.com for a free trial. When you're ready to launch just head to squarespace.com forward slash athena mella for 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You haven't got any snacks left in your mouth? Do you want a bit of salami? You finished it? You ate it all my love. We stopped for lunch at the saddle and now we are back on the trail. We just did a really steep section didn't we? Yeah. It was probably the steep section I put my down jacket on when we had lunch so I'm quite warm now but my hands are still a bit chilly and we're heading round, I'm not sure if you can see here, I'll just turn the camera around in a minute but we're basically heading up onto the ridge and round. We've got two summits, I can't remember what they're called. That's the first one I think and then you've got the main one over the other side. Those are the steep walls. I think Aoife's going to have a nap now. Fingers crossed, but yeah it's beautiful up here. It's such a good day, it's pretty cold for October. But it's lovely. we're like basically done, we're just going to find a camping spot and yeah bag's feeling heavy, I'm feeling hungry, I need a wee. Aoife's getting a bit irritable. No, no, no, it's been so good. You know when you just get to the end of the walk Aoife's getting a bit grumpy, so we're just going to try and find somewhere to camp. Yeah, realities, hey? Pretty nice, hey? Life goes. Yeah, imagine having a lodge on the lock. I want that one. You want that one? Yeah, I want that one. Shall I open it for you? Yeah. Oops, Aoife's having peanut almond and raspberry. Yum, yum, yum, yum. Is that good? Well somebody stole my outdoor provisions, nut butter, and now I won't give mummy any. We're just debating where to camp because where there's like this um lodge up there and there's obviously nobody in it but and there's lots of like nice flat spots near it but we're like probably shouldn't camp right next to it. Just in case anybody turns up. Also I said it's a little bit creepy, it's all like boarded up. It looks like it's used. You want mummy to get you a bit more? The peg's out for me. Okay. Thank you. Let's sweep it out. Someone's excited. Yeah, me. Can't wait for a cup of tea. Yes, guess what I've got in my pocket? Shortbread. What? I think I've got three as well. Oh, three for me? Hello monkey. It's okay, mummy's got you. Rawr. Rawr. Rawr. Rawr. Hi. Dinner time. What have you got, Abi? I've got chicken curry. Chicken curry? It's really good. There's a torneo in the woods. Efi's got reindeer stew. I think it was an owl, bubba. Daddy, you might need to go filter some water actually. Okay, is there a dog? Where did your socks go, Efe? Oh, there they are. Where's Efe? Night night, baby. I want hot chocolate. Yeah, it's coming. Basically when this is boiled, try and make some hot chocolate. Are you still filming it? Oh, don't be mummy's man. What about daddy's man? I've just woken up on the shores of Glenmick and it's a really beautiful evening. It's actually quite warm and it's been amazing like listening to the stags all night. I think there's particularly two on the hill up behind me and they're having a good old roar at each other. It's quite amazing to hear whether that's turned into a fight. I have no idea, but it's quite incredible to listen to. I think the nicest thing is like Efe this morning was just laying in bed just like, daddy be quiet. She was just like listening to the stags and for me that just makes it more worthwhile, more etching to the mind. Hopefully we can come many times to this area and listen to it or stalk it. Yeah, I've been quite lucky actually to come to this estate in particular. It wasn't in our mind really. It's more about the walk, but yeah, the fact that it's a stalking estate, there's a lot of big deer population. Yeah, it's definitely been a bonus. It's not the easiest pan for pouring, is it? No, but you know, we survive. We've got a hungry baby. It's 20 past nine. We're just having breakfast. We're kind of almost packed up to go. Just need to put on clothes and then pack down the tent. I think it's only about five kilometers walk out, so maybe like an hour, a little bit over back to the car park where the van is. Yeah, just kind of getting ready to go, aren't we? So the bag I've been using is the Fjallraven Kaika 75 and it has this compartment in the bottom which is separate and it's waterproof. So this is where we keep the tent. It's quite good as well because you can pack the whole bag and then just leave the bottom and then just shove the tent in and we just shove it in really. I mean, you know, semi-tidy fashion. But yeah, I love this bag. It has these side pockets as well. So you pack, you can basically pack the main compartment and then pack the big side pockets and then it's got like lid as well and this actually detaches so you can use that as a separate small bag. Yeah, it's a great, great bag. 10 seconds? It's 10 seconds. Ready? Go on. Ready? No! Ready? No! Snacking? Quick second of alcohol provision spa. Keep the energy up. We're almost back now. It's just, it's supposed to be just over there. The car keys. Miracle. I don't know, what's that? You're doing great. I'm being very careful because the van is precious and the people in it are all very precious. To pick me up when I'm falling, give me the dream house with enough space to hide away. I'm tired of feeling like I don't know What's delicious... ♪ But I've never been a selfish broken heart ♪