0:00:22 > 0:00:26It's a real blustery day of April showers and sunshine,
0:00:26 > 0:00:28and I'm climbing Lochnagar,
0:00:28 > 0:00:32the mountain that lords it over the forests of Royal Deeside.
0:00:32 > 0:00:35Lochnagar is one of the grand mountains of Scotland,
0:00:35 > 0:00:38and while it might lack the immediate presence
0:00:38 > 0:00:41of a Buachaille Etive Mor or a Ben Nevis,
0:00:41 > 0:00:46and it might lack the subtle lines of a Ben Alligin or even a Cairn Toul,
0:00:46 > 0:00:47but it's a gritty sort of mountain
0:00:47 > 0:00:49and I think that's wholly appropriate
0:00:49 > 0:00:53for its position here in the northeast of Scotland.
0:00:54 > 0:00:58I lived, for a few years, in Aberdeen, and my youngest son was born in Aberdeen
0:00:58 > 0:01:03so I feel I'm a wee bit qualified to describe the people of the northeast as being gritty.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07The people who wrote the long, 46-verse bothy ballads,
0:01:07 > 0:01:11the people who worked in the farm towns all around this place.
0:01:11 > 0:01:15It's a fantastic mountain, well-loved by our royalty,
0:01:15 > 0:01:17by poets and artists,
0:01:17 > 0:01:21and it has a real character of its own.
0:01:28 > 0:01:31There's a trivia games question that asks,
0:01:31 > 0:01:34"Is Lochnagar saltwater or freshwater?"
0:01:34 > 0:01:38And apparently the answer is "neither" because Lochnagar is a mountain
0:01:38 > 0:01:40but that's not strictly the true answer,
0:01:40 > 0:01:43because behind me here, there's a small lochan.
0:01:43 > 0:01:48It dribbles its way over the edge and down into the Ballochbuie forest in Upper Deeside,
0:01:48 > 0:01:50and it's called Lochan na Gaire.
0:01:50 > 0:01:54And this mountain is named after the small lochan
0:01:54 > 0:01:57and it most definitely is freshwater.
0:01:57 > 0:02:01But you know, Lochnagar is more of a range of small hills and mountains
0:02:01 > 0:02:04than one single entity of a mountain.
0:02:04 > 0:02:08And the highest top, where the summit cairn is, is called Cac Carn Beag.
0:02:08 > 0:02:14And I have the sneaky feeling that when Queen Victoria took up residence just downhill at Balmoral,
0:02:14 > 0:02:18she didn't quite like that name, because the literal translation is,
0:02:18 > 0:02:20"the wee, shitty cairn,"
0:02:20 > 0:02:23and somehow, I don't think she would have approved of that.
0:02:32 > 0:02:36Few of our mountains have had songs written after them.
0:02:36 > 0:02:41But when Lord Byron came to Ballater as a young man, he was suffering from scarlet fever
0:02:41 > 0:02:46and he took to walking around this area, and he became quite infatuated with Lochnagar.
0:02:46 > 0:02:51It's said that he was quite heavily influenced by the works of John Ruskin,
0:02:51 > 0:02:56and Ruskin had a strange notion about wild places and wild nature.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59He saw all as menacing and threatening.
0:02:59 > 0:03:03Some people have described it as all sublimity and blackness.
0:03:03 > 0:03:08But dispite that, Byron wrote a great song about Lochnagar.
0:03:08 > 0:03:10And the chorus goes along the lines of,
0:03:10 > 0:03:13"England, thy beauties are tame and domestic
0:03:13 > 0:03:16"To one who has roamed o'er the mountains afar
0:03:16 > 0:03:19"But oh, for the crags that are wild and majestic
0:03:19 > 0:03:23"The steep frowning glories of dark Lochnagar."
0:03:31 > 0:03:37You know, there's a tremendous history in these cliffs and this corrie below me.
0:03:37 > 0:03:41It's good, sometimes, to come here and reflect on some of the great pioneers
0:03:41 > 0:03:45who came and climbed here in the 1920s and '30s.
0:03:45 > 0:03:49People like Brown, or later on, the great Dr Tom Patey.
0:03:49 > 0:03:52This was very much his playground. He was an Aberdonian.
0:03:52 > 0:03:57I also like to remember an old friend of mine, who died fairly recently.
0:03:57 > 0:04:01The one-legged, blind poet, Syd Scroggie, from Dundee.
0:04:01 > 0:04:05And before he lost his leg and his sight in the Second World War,
0:04:05 > 0:04:10Syd did a lot of the pioneering work here on Eagle Ridge of Lochnagar.
0:04:12 > 0:04:15That's the summit. Not very far now.
0:04:16 > 0:04:19It's sometimes nice just to come here
0:04:19 > 0:04:23and hear the ghosts of those early stalwarts of Scottish mountaineering,
0:04:23 > 0:04:29those pioneers who have left such a rich heritage amongst the hills and mountains of Scotland.
0:04:34 > 0:04:39Cac Carn Beag. I think you'll agree with me that this is anything but a wee shitty hill.
0:04:39 > 0:04:423,786 feet above sea level.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47You can see Morven in Caithness which, according to this, is 88 miles away.
0:04:47 > 0:04:54Ben Nevis is... Where's Ben Nevis? Across in that sort of direction, about 90 miles.
0:04:54 > 0:04:57And then, to the east, according to this,
0:04:57 > 0:05:01on a clear day you can see the Girdle Ness lighthouse at Aberdeen harbour.
0:05:01 > 0:05:08So from Ben Nevis on one side, to Aberdeen harbour on the other, we really are in the centre of things.
0:05:13 > 0:05:20I know a lot of hill-walkers who'll bag their summit and then see the rest of the day as an anticlimax.
0:05:20 > 0:05:22But Lochnagar is a hill of great contrasts.
0:05:22 > 0:05:26Contrasts that are sustained right to the end of the walk.
0:05:26 > 0:05:29We're just about to enter the ravine of the Glassalt,
0:05:29 > 0:05:34which drops down quite steeply to Glassalt Shiel via Loch Muick, and in its own way,
0:05:34 > 0:05:38it's as spectacular as anything that we've seen so far.
0:05:48 > 0:05:53We've taken the tourist route around Lochnagar, but there are other routes, and longer routes,
0:05:53 > 0:05:59but however you climb Lochnagar, I would urge you to take it easy, take it gently.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02Enjoy something of the character of the mountain.
0:06:02 > 0:06:06And you, too, might begin to appreciate what Lord Byron did -
0:06:06 > 0:06:09that Lochnagar really is quite wild and majestic.