For some strange reason, perhaps because its just a fun thing to do the Computer Society generally does a few hillwalking trips each year somewhere out in the wilds of Scotland. The new academic semester began three weeks ago, hence going by tradition a spot of hillwalking was called for. Its often joked about that we should rename the society to the “Hillwalking Society” rather than the “Computer Society”, although last week I gave a lecture and demo of a motion capture system recently purchased by the School as well as a Remotely operated Jib. This coming week we will be hearing all about the Raspberry Pi from one of our final year honours students.
The weather for today’s trip was perhaps not the best as it was raining for more or less the entire day, but I think its safe to say that everybody enjoyed the days adventure. In total about twenty people from the School went on the trip to Loch Muick. Most academics and postgrads took the “low road” (about half a dozen or so), I on the other hand wanted some elevation and views hence took the undergrads and MSc’s up onto the “high road” for a more adventurous journey through the rain and cloud covered hills surrounding the loch. As you can see from some of the pictures the visibility was quite poor for all of our journey across the ridge of the hill. Effective visibility may have been perhaps 100 feet or less on many an occasion.
The very first photo is of a group shot taken on our return journey back to the car park (perhaps just 15 mins or less away). Only after looking at the photos did I notice that the Irish flag should have been the other way around. At this time however it was close to 17:00 and we were focused on getting back to the Minibus so it was just a very quick stop for a photo op. We had left Aberdeen just after 09:30 in the morning and made a quick stop in Aboyne for some supplies, which included several boxes of Jaffa Cakes! We had arrived at Loch Muick and had commenced the hillwalking adventure a little before 12:00 in the day. For additional photos see the following Photo Set on Flickr. On our journey back to Aberdeen we stopped in Ballater for about 30 mins where half a dozen of us picked up some fish and chips, before carrying on with our journey around 18:00. We finally reached Aberdeen around 19:30 and dropped people off at a few places, before finally making our way back to the main campus to drop off the minibus just a few minutes before 20:00.
In the above picture from left to right you can see: , Kevin, Francois, Michal, Michal, Ross, Gleb, , and myself.
Shortly after setting off on our journey we encountered this frog quite happily just sitting in a puddle right in the middle of the track. As you can see he had his arms up and seems a bit camera shy.
The decision point to take the “high road” or the “low road”, for me it was a simple choice. It was supposted to be a “hillwalking trip” after all!
You take the high road and I will take the lower road and i’ll be in Scotland before you, As you know, Daniel, I was there before you. Did you find my footprints? I like all the photographs, very good. DAN
“. . . perhaps not the best . . . ”
hmmm, yeah . . . it does not look like the very best weather one might have hoped for. Still, nice photos.
On a good day the views are truly wonderful, the overcast weather however did create a very different adventure, felt more like an exploration into the unknown. You could consider it as our own mini adventure reenactment across the misty mountains of middle-earth.
These photos are Amazingly Awesome, Thanks for the ride, LOVED IT.
A little wet, but looks like fun. A nice day in the country side. Thanks.
May have been a bit wet but was great to get out into the countryside. Everybody really enjoyed themselves despite the weather.