Speyside Way, Craigellachie to Ballindalloch

Wrapped day 3 of 5 on the Speyside Way with a flat, flat, very flat walk from Craigellachie to Ballindalloch today.

After a near full Scottish Breakfast (missing the haggis and black pudding), we left the Highlander Inn and walk literally a few steps to join back up with the Speyside Way where we left it yesterday.

The day started flat and stayed flat for us ALL day – a speed bump would have been exciting! But no complaints here, it was a well groomed path along the river (in some places so close you could hear the water rushing over the rocks) that connects small village to the next and made for such easy walking!

To make the 19.6 flat terrain a little more entertaining we started to map ahead the number of kilometers to the next milestone – a bridge, a tunnel, a train station turned into someone’s home, a church, etc! Definitely some gems enroute!

We stopped at Dailuaine Halt for our 11-sies break. This was a train station in year’s past but there are no longer any buildings although it still boasts a very nice picnic table that we enjoyed. Then we stopped at Tamdhu for our 2-sies break which was also a train station and still has buildings but they are now a classy whisky tasting room.

As we were wrapping up our walk we crossed a long, amazing aqueduct bridge – so long and really just a great finish to a long day.

We arrived at our pick up spot, Ballindalloch Station (now someone’s home), 30mins earlier than the arranged time. Luck was on our side though, the taxi also arrived early just a few minutes later! We are staying at the same place as last night, The Highlander Inn, so will taxi back tonight and tomorrow the taxi will drive us back to the Station to start again!

The threat of rain was real all day! We lucked out through, despite a few short stints of mist and pretty ominous clouds all day breaking up across the blue sky, we stayed dry all day! The strong winds kept the clouds moving on. Perhaps this explains the heat rash on both feet and under my knee brace 😦 booo!

We wrapped up the day with a pint on the sunny deck at The Highlander Inn. Maybe a nap, maybe some reading, maybe some social media scrolling and for sure some fish and chips followed.

The stats:

Trail: Speyside Way, Scotland
Day: 3/5
To/From: Craigallachie/Ballindalloch
Start/Finish time: 10:09am/3:31pm
Distance: 19.6km trail (20.1km Hiiker App)
Steps: 21,046
Terrain: flat, flat, so very flat
Weather: 14C Overcast w Wind
Breaky: Full Scottish Breakfast sans Haggis and Black Pudding
Lunch n Snacks: banana, cookies, 1/2 Mature Cheese on White Bread with Prawn crisps
Dinner: Fish and Chips
Pints: 3
Tonight’s home: Highlander Inn
Mood: happy big style
Body: feeling great knee does not hate me, rest of the body is loving this but the heat rash could tone it down a little please
Highlights: taxi arriving at near the exact same time we did end of day (30mins early)
Lowlights: Rosa feeling all blah
People of interest: the nice old gramp that recommend the vanilla and raspberry scone, told us it has no calories; and the distiller dad at the bar chatting up how fantastic his kids are
Funny bone: discovering you are sitting next to a cabinet of whisky bottles that all cost a 1000bucks then you proceed to elbow the thing putting your sweater on
Spontaneous dancing: stay tuned for tomorrow on this one