It's a dads life: Walkabout Glen

I've been promising Big Boy some 1-2-1 time for a while, be it walking or biking. I couldn't manage giving him dad time all to himself, but he did something promised for a few months. Today, we decided to go use their new walking boots and give them a bit of a trial run - and what a trial they got! We ended up doing about 6 miles or thereabouts, with a fair wee climb in there for even my legs, never mind the fun sized ones.
With the promise of a picnic lunch, some snack and their new boots, both boys were more than happy to have a walk. Chunky had the luxury of having me as a chauffeur.
We parked up at Invermark, where, incidently, I saw my old Mini parked two spaces down. It was still there when we left. After reaching the beginning of Loch Lee, we stopped to throw some stones in the water. As we walked further along, R informed me that Loch Lee is a good example of "alliteration." I had to own up to not knowing, but having just checked, I see what he means!

After an hour or so, and a little pestering from middle boy, we stopped for eats. Given that I was already carrying the aforementioned Chunky, lunch, the obligatory nappy & wipes and the heaviest camera in the world, I decided the picnic blanket was beyond me. A perfect spot where a flat stone peeked up amongst the sheep shit seemed good enough for lunch.

Not wasting any time, we cracked on after about 20 minutes. As you can see, O was still full of walking at this point, leading from the front.

Still full of enthusiasm, he ventured down to bridge to throw more stones but got distracted by the sheep in front on him. Funny as that may be, the wee shite doubled back on himself about 50 yards later to throw his stones! This was just about the point where what enthusiam he had left deserted him, because the climb started soon after.

There was a brief change of scenary as we found ourselves in a small forest. It had some great big logs over the burn to play on, but dad couldn't really get too boystorous with C on my back. So we cracked on up the hill to look for the "Secret Loch." It's a wee hidden loch that sits up a hill that you can't see from the track we previously walked on. I worked up a hell of a sweat carrying C up there.

The boys were keen to show mum where they had been walking. The car was parked about a half hours walk from the other end of the loch.

As the hill was getting fairly steep, O decided I needed to pull him up the hill as well. (That might explain why I feel warped tonight!) R found a lovely polished rock, so I got him seated, and told him not to drop mums pride and joy whilst he took a few pictures of us. I then proceeded to give them a lecture on not walking on the wet bits of said rock - we'll come back to that later....

It was getting really difficult for O about here. We still couldn't find our Secret Loch so I ventured ahead to find a suitable vantage point. At this point, R was still full of walking, and wanted to walk up and over the entire hill to find the waterfalls. I managed to talk him out of that before we broke his brother.

We found it! Granted, dad had to venture off the track for us to get a view of it. That was only the second break in the pace for their little legs, and this was about 2 and a half hours from the car.

On the way down the hills, dad promptly slipped and went tumbling on that same rock that R took his photos on. At great pains to myself, I saved your camera and your boy from serious injury, whilst being lectured from my 5 year old about the risks of walking on wet rocks! All of us had taken at least a wee fall now.
Once we got down, R was still full of walking and ventured out in front. He was singing his wee heart out. He even told me that his heel was a little sore, but very matter of factly. He then told me that it was sore before we started climbing the hill. When we got home, he showed me his "new skin" which is his terminology for a blister. Even then, he still wasn't that fussed. I had him singing all the way back, and C squealing in my lug for an hour too. O was much less happy with this walking and need a lot of tickling and distracting on the way back.