And here’s the rain again. Totally overcast, steady and inescapable. We’ve just been down to Rocksalt and Snails for lunch. Appropriately, I had a winter salad, which was quite tasty. Before that we went to the Burn o’ Vat and did a walk described in the Ballater Eagle: very pleasant, but tiring towards the end as it started to rain and the finishing post seemed to retreat into the distance.  Most of it was great, and we only saw one person  – a young female cyclist bombing along at a fearsome rate of knots.

Yesterday was beautiful, though a bit chilly. We drove to the Linn of Quoich and encountered a weatherbeaten South African (I think), who said last night had seen the second worst conditions he had experienced in the area. (The worst was Storm Frank, when  Ballater was inundated.) He was in charge of a group of lads camping in the hills and said three groups had had to abandon their expeditions because they were cold, wet and hadn’t slept.

We later saw him with a group at the Linn itself, after we’d climbed over, done a bit of exploring and been pretty impressed by the force and quantity of the water. You couldn’t get near the punch bowl, but the bridge had been repaired and we walked across and up on to the track heading towards Bheinn a’ Bhurd. Got some distant views of snowy Cairngorm peaks.

Afterwards we went into Braemar and had some sandwiches and tea in a cafe with music we liked but the waitress didn’t. Went into the tourism office and another shop, then drove up to Glenshee, where Dot had a hot chocolate and I didn’t. We decided not to go for another walk there but headed for home and immediately walked round the golf course. Both the path and the river were unrecognisable, but of course the river was in spate and not as it would normally be.

Back at the house we decided to eat in, so emerged again to get supplies from the Co-op. We also had a chat with the owner, Jenny, who said we could have stayed the extra three days. We assumed it would be rented on a weekly basis. Theoretically we could have cancelled the hotel, but we decided to stick with our arrangements. Dot wrote a long e-mail to the head of the school where she’s a governor, which is having a SIAMS inspection next week, and then we watched Fargo, which is wonderful.

Have now cancelled hotel  after offer from Jenny we couldn’t refuse.