WALK7 Tomatin 28th February

Well, what an unexpected adventure this Monday's walk was. Firstly, it was a Wednesday, which seems not to be that unusual. One of the joys of retirement is being able to do what you want or to change the way you do things. We had had a busy few days, so had a quiet one on Monday, because we can.

We didn't go too far on Wednesday, just down the A9 to Tomatin. We arrived at the Three Bridges Café just in time for lunch. We've been there before and it is very nice and airy and the food is good. They had a little leaflet on the table listing their local suppliers. This seems like a good start to me. Anywhere that is reducing food miles and giving business to good local enterprises has to be going in the right direction.

Sharon had a big bowl of lentil soup, oatcakes, pate and a little dressed salad. She ate it all up and declared it very good.

I had a wrap filled with falafel and hummus, the same salad and some tortilla chips. The falafel certainly seemed homemade and it was all delicious.

Naturally we resisted the temptation to have a fairly local beer or a more exotic wine and had the tap water instead. Hydration is important in dealing with knee pain.

The view from the café takes in the three eponymous three bridges. The nearest and most visible is the railway viaduct. This carries the Highland Railway over the River Findhorn and was opened to trains in 1897. One of the designers was John Fowler, who also worked on the Forth Rail Bridge.

Beyond that is the modern A9 road bridge, built in the 1970's.

Further away than that is the Raigbeg Bridge, which you cannot really see in the photo. However, strangely, this bridge is the third one to have been built on this site. The first was a stone arched bridge constructed to replace previously used fords across the river. This was destroyed in floods of 1829. Local landowners paid for a wooden replacement immediately adjacent. The present bridge is the third one and is a timber decked bridge supported by stone piers and cast iron lattice work sides. That in turn was superseded by a new bridge much further upstream.

If I had known all this, I would have asked if the café, if it was named after the three bridges you can see, or the three bridges that once crossed the river at Raigbeg?

Looking down the Allt Neacrath towards the Findhorn. I cannot trace a translation for Neacrath. Crath might mean shake, wave, tremble or sprinkle, which doesn't really help me much. We were standing on one of more than 1000 stone bridges built by Thomas Telford.

We turned off the main village road onto Mill Road. There is an old Carding Mill on the south side of this road. Carding separates and orientates fibres so that they can be further processed. I don't know which fibres were being carded in Tomatin - wool or flax perhaps.

I didn't really notice the mill, but I did notice the flocks of finches in the trees above our path.

There was also a lot of juniper by the track. This is quite apt in that Tomatin is derived from the Gaelic Tom Aiteann - Hill of the Juniper. There is a suggestion that juniper used to be the fuel used in illegal whisky making because it does not smoke when burning, so could not be seen by the excisemen. That may or may not be true, but Tomatin is famous for its whisky distillery.

The distillery is hugely important to the village and the wider area. The company owns a great deal of property around the distillery, but not the woods we were about to walk through, despite the name.

We got in through the tall kissing gate. And, yes we did!

There were some fine views from the track over the long felled section of woods to the hills beyond.

Looking through the trees to Melfort House, occupied by the owners of the estate and distillery wood.

Looking across to Moy Windfarm. Lots of people hate windfarms, but I generally find them OK.

This enigmatic cross and surrounding wall and railing did have an inscription. However, it was illegible. I thought I would find out all about once I got home and fired up the laptop. Not so. I can find almost nothing at all. The only firm reference I can see was on the 2nd OS map (1885-1900) of the area, which lists the site as Tomnacraig Private Burial Ground. It would appear in reality to be the site of only one or two burials, presumably for landowners at the time. It does appear in a slightly different mapped form and without a name in the 1st Edition map from 1843-1882. There is evidence of a contiguous farmstead and buildings. These are no longer obvious on the ground and may or may not have been related to the graveyard.

It certainly seems to have had some significance as the trees around it seem planted at or about 100 - 150 years ago, so probably contemporary with the graveyard.

It wasn't too far to the railway line form here, but it took us a bit longer than necessary as we took a wrong turning trying to get down a narrow path to the village. However, this turned out to be a bit of a dead end.

We got to the railway eventually.

There are very large iron gates on the north side of the line, presumably to control access at some point in time, but they don't seem to have been shut in a while.

No sooner had we passed under the railway than a huge train carrying Tesco containers went rumbling by.

I'm sure they would have added to this photo of the viaduct a little further along, but they were well on their way by the time we got there. The viaduct opened in 1807, over 100 years before Tesco's founder started selling from a stall in Edgeware.

 From the viaduct, it was a short walk back to the car. On the way we passed some silver meerkats standing on a fence! Why not?

We walked where we had never walked before and it was less than 20 minutes from home. As it happens, we could have turned left after the railway underpass and walked on to join another walk around the distillery. Adding the two walks together would make a Dinosaur walking route that we have never done before. We could start and end at the 3 Bridges, ending with tea and cakes which is always a requirement.

Another excellent Bracing walk and one to add to our growing collection of joyful walks.

We will definitely do this again.