November in the Cairngorms is the quiet month. The summer holiday crowds are long gone and the October midterm breaks are over. The watersports centres furl their sails and pack away their boats, local guesthouses close for a few weeks, and there’s not enough snow for the skiing to gather pace. Apart from the decked halls of supermarkets, all the Christmas carry-on has not yet cranked up and diaries have gaps. It is a lull. For locals and the land, a welcome lull. We can draw breath.
But the weather can be grim. Temperatures start to plummet and darkness cloaks us. There are storms. A rare free day without rain sends me up the Feshie hills with a friend and the dog. The forecast was for cloud all day and high winds in the afternoon, so we start early, and are rewarded by surprisingly clear skies. To the west, we can see far across the Spey strath to Monadhliath, “the grey hills”, and to the east, the lumpy lower slopes of the Cairngorms. The sun brings a late autumn glow to the landscape, lighting up the long grasses, the coppery bog asphodel and the rust of the granite. On days like this, you can see why the Gaelic name for this range is Am Monadh Ruadh – “the russet hills”.
