New Saturday run - Shooting Greens to Forest of Birse (and back)

The maestro himself - Gary Gutteridge - was, after all, there in person to lead us on the route.  This was probably just as well, it might have taken a while to navigate some parts even with good maps.    It was a beautiful day with lovely views of the hills as 10 Cosmics and two dogs set off.  The route went over Glack's hill then some lovely grassy tracks over Tom's Cairn then down to the road and the Finzean Memorial (also a standing stone), over the road found us in thicker forest, some very boggy bits and here we really needed our leader, then track down to the Birse road (we made a detour up another small hill) - then back again.    Gary saw the back end of a Capercaille, we all enjoyed a fine sociable run in the sunshine, followed by tea and cakes back at the cars.    Depending on whose GPS you believed we'd done about 12.5 miles, and although it had taken 2 and a half hours or so, Bob at least had only been moving for 2 hrs 5min.   Thank you Gary for a great morning. Anita