"Just don't expect it to be like the Alps" they all guffawed.
I mean, I have skied in Scotland before: 3 times actually (after I worked it out). Once I skied on rock and ice, once I skied in horizontally driving ice-rain and once I skied in what can only be called Alpine 2019 conditions (hot sun, perfect snow) save for the slightly *cough* shorter runs.
This year totally took the biscuit though. Storm Dennis shut the Cairngorm resort completely and that would have been that, were it not for a hair-raising hour's drive to The Lecht, where we did actually get on the snow...mostly real snow...partly artificial...in the gale-force winds...for 4 hours...on the bunny slopes.
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| The sun did appear |
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| And disappeared... |
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| The Cairngorms. Note whipping snow. |
...and the kids loved it. Once again, it's about the people, and you can't get better than those cousins.
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| The Big Kids |
And don't say we ain't smart: we know when we're on to a good thing. And so we spent the next few days with those cousins, visiting the area around Aviemore, frequently in snow gear, cos, you know...Scotland.
First up, the Highland Wildlife Park, where we got to experience some of Scotland's wildlife from the past and present. The Park is within the Cairngorms National Park and is run by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and as such tends to show animals that are extremely endangered. We went to the polar bear feedings and learned how a female polar bear has to put on enough weight for a fertilised egg to implant. The worry is that as sea ice recedes polar bears won't be able to catch enough seals in order to put on the weight required to sustain a pregnancy, and that polar bears are actually critically endangered as a species. The female at the Park gave birth to a cub in 2018, the first in 25 years in the UK.
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| A female and a polar bear |
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| Hamish the Cub |
There weren't just polar bears but my hands were too cold to get decent photos of the tiger or those we saw through the car as we did a safari-style drive of the enclosures.
We also spent a snowy/haily/rainy day at Landmark Forest Adventure Park. The snow/hail/rain meant that over half the park was shut (and so we got a nice little discount on the ticket price). The Park is made up of adventure grounds, rides, a butterfly hot house (no butterflies over winter, of course) and DINOSAUR KINGDOM, which was enough to make us go in the first place.
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| Millipied |
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| Giant African Snail |
...you still eat a packed lunch outside in the middle of winter.
The Cairngorm Mountain Range close to Aviemore are made up of a high plateaux at about 1000-1200m above sea level and closely resemble tundra, which is why the plateaux also supports the UK's only free-ranging herd of reindeer. The paddocks are open every day and there is a daily guided hill trip to see, touch and feed the herd.
Reindeer have been living in the Cairngorms National park since 1952. Although the species is native to the UK, the last record of wild British reindeer is from around 800 years ago. Still, the sub-arctic qualities of the Cairngorms do provide a perfect home for reindeer and are not dissimilar to their other ranging habitat in Sweden and Russia. The first consignment of 2 bulls and 5 cows were brought from Sweden, quarantined and then released. The herd now numbers around 150.
The reindeer (often the old, young or castrated bulls) often rotate in and out of the paddocks and their free-ranging territory high in the mountains, allowing those who can't make the hill trip to get a good look at them and learn about their history and future. I think next time, it'll be a hill trip. But maybe not in winter.
i) football camp
The holiday was absolutely brilliant. But next year: France.
