Friends, this is it. Number #48 of #48walks!

I’m ending an epic year of walking with this early morning walk up a mountain while I was home in Arkansas this past September.

Walking with friends who love me even if my dreadlocks blow into their faces. YIKES!

I got to pop home in September for an Arkansas Women Blogger Conference, so I fit in a few walks with my dear, dear friends.

Pinnacle Mountain is about a mile and a half to the top and back. It’s not super long but you do have to navigate some boulders.

This walk represents so much of what I have loved about walking this year: walking side by side with friends.

Even on the days I have walked alone, I have walked virtually with friends.

Every #48walks tag on the internet has been like a little hello for me this year.

I love getting reminders to get outside, and because I want to keep getting them in 2015, I have something new coming down the pipe for outdoor adventuring in the New Year (stay tuned!)

But for now, I am going to enjoy the end of this journey of doing #48walks. A year of walking to new places and trying out longer walks. Of walking with friends and even with strangers. It’s been a lovely year friends! Thanks so much for coming along!

PS The other reason I’m ending with this Arkansas walk is in honor of the fact that we are on a plane today, heading to our blessed home state for Christmas! We are super excited about soaking up a little #DogtownLife over the holidays!

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One of the starkest changes that moving to Scotland has brought to my life involves the way I do grocery shopping.

I used to make a couple of trips to the store per week in addition to one large shopping trip to my neighborhood Sam’s club.

With my current kitchen and appliance sizes, buying in bulk is really not an option.

We have a large supermarket within a stone’s throw of our house, so I have been walking to the store almost daily for groceries.

I still plan my meals out about a week in advance, but I just pick up what I need each day.

One or two days’ groceries is about all I can carry.

Sometimes I push it and buy three days of groceries, but I’m always a bit sorry on the journey back home.

On weeks where I have lots of work to do from home, my daily trip to the store can often be my only outing so I vary it up by adding on a mile here and there. There’s a path through a forest along the River Don that I love in every season. These are late November shots.

A rare bit of sunshine on the path. This is high noon on an Aberdeen autumn day.

There are no leaves left on these trees now, but I still go this way many times each week to get to the store. To collect a bag of apples, a bag of oranges, a little milk, a loaf of bread, some pasta or some courgettes (zucchini).

I look for what’s on sale or what’s in season to use for tonight’s soup. Butternut squash for roasting or potatoes to serve with chili. Lately a box of mince pies or a bottle of mulled wine often find their way into my shopping bag.

There are many small treasures of this simple daily routine: the crunch of the leaves under my feet, the sounds of a new walking playlist in my ears and the latest offerings of my local market.

Because we always need to eat (and we eat a lot at the Chino House) I find myself walking to the store at all different times of the day and in all manner of weather.

I often wonder if I will try to keep up this habit at the end of our time in Scotland, but I have a hunch that this is a routine for this season in my life, in which case, I think I will try to appreciate it all the more.

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Oh Scotland in November.

You are beautiful in your own way.

Eeking out a few daylight hours between blankets of darkness.

Misty walks among bare trees.

Constant rain making the rivers flow hard and fast.

Your autumn colors are all dark red browns painted between the evergreen.

We race to stretch our legs during the precious few hours of daylight on a Saturday.

Bundled up, we tromp and climb and get mud on our boots.

Walking in August is all generous sunlight but late autumn walks under a dull gray sky make the long nights more bearable.

Sleep comes easy and I dream of forests.

This walk is around Loch Kinord, beginning at the Burn O Vat visitor center about an hour west of Aberdeen.

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On my last morning in Athens, Sarabeth had to catch a 5am bus to the airport, so I got up early to walk her to her stop, grabbed some coffee and then had a wander around the city by myself.

No agenda. No maps. No rules.

Just me and my camera. Walking and watching.

I did this for about four hours before I hopped on the Metro to go catch my plane home.

I love walking around a city early in the day before it’s busy.

Here are my photos from that morning.

Enjoy!

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I would love to one day meet the free climbing monks who hauled stones in baskets to build monasteries on the tops of these otherworldly rock formations.

I think they must have possessed a patience and determination that is practically nonexistent in today’s world.

We wandered in their footsteps, through the woods and up staircases, walking through the buildings these monks called home hundreds of years ago.

We even saw some of their preserved skulls. (Yikes)

But I could not quite get inside the minds of these monks.

I pictured their arrival, their wondering in amazement at the rocks that seemed to shoot up from the ground around the town of Kalabaka, but I could not get in touch with what made them decide to risk life and limb to try to live on the tops of these rocks, not coming down for months (years) at a time. Eating meager meals and waiting for food to be occasionally lifted up by rope.

To get inside the minds of these ancient monks and indeed the modern day monks and nuns that now live in the seven ancient monasteries of Meteora, we had local guides who walked with us in the region.

For three days our main guide, George, and several of his friends and his brother, showed us this part of the world through their eyes.

We walked several miles through the woods to reach one of the monasteries, just as the monks did all those years ago.

When we reached the monastery at the end of our walk, we took a staircase (built in the 1940s) to get to the top instead of the scary wooden ladders or instead of being lifted up in a rickety basket.

Then we retreated back down to the the town of Kalabaka for the most gorgeous spreads of food for lunch, followed by another outing and then equally gorgeous evening meals in family restaurants.

After gorging ourselves on feta cheese like I’ve never before tasted (served fresh, fried and sprinkled over other delicacies) and all kinds of local specialties, I asked George how everyone stayed so thin eating such rich meals.

“It’s the Greek breakfast that keeps us thin,” he said.

“Oh, what is the typical Greek breakfast then?” I took his bait, expecting him to name the creamy Greek yogurt I had been enjoying at our hotel.

He smiled. “A coffee frappe [similar to a latte] and two packs of Marlboros.”

While in Meteora, we were guests of Visit Meteora, a group that George and his brothers formed in order to encourage more people to visit a place they all know and love. Together, they plan and lead all sorts of excursions in the area. (I have my eye on the rock climbing one for next time!) I can’t imagine that Sarabeth and I could have enjoyed seeing Meteora through a better pair of eyes than George’s. He was full of passion for his town’s tourism industry, knowledgeable about the history of the region and in possession of a sly sense of humor. Be sure and say hello from us if you happen through the area anytime soon!

P.S. As a bonus, Sarabeth and I got to travel with some other amazing bloggers and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there are some crazy gorgeous photos from our trip over at Finding the Universe. Because Just Wow.

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Our summer went by really fast and we got to do so much that I have almost forgotten some of my favorite days.

Slow days in Scotland with friends and family.

Like this one, when we Sarabeth was in town and we went to Craigievar Castle, a place in Aberdeenshire that may have inspired the original Disney Princess Castle.

My kids were still in school at this point, so Sarabeth and I were exploring castles and gardens. Taido was along with us this day, and we walked these woods around the castle before it opened up for the day.

This was in June so everything was all in bloom.

Again, I just keep remembering that the forests and flowers are going to look this way again.

After a walk through the gardens and woods, we toured the castle of course.

The best bit is always the view from the top.

I’m so grateful that I got to share this walk with my sweet friend and her daughter. Having friends visit has been one of the greatest gifts of living overseas!

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While we were in Switzerland this past summer, we took a quick camping trip to the French Alps. We only managed to get in one real climb while we were there, apart from walks around our campground and the darling mountain town of Chamonix.

Taido chose a hike to Lac Blanc, a long walk up to a lake that would take us past gorgeous vistas of Mount Blanc and many of the other striking peaks in the area.

But when we started up the mountain, we couldn’t see much of anything.

Well, we did see a few mountain goats. That was exciting.

But for the most part, we were just heading up further into the clouds.

The kids found it to be super discouraging, and they kept asking to turn around. We had a picnic lunch in the car that we had left behind thinking we would be down before lunch.

We didn’t reach Lac Blanc until well after lunch.

Even in the mist, it was really gorgeous.

And lucky for us, there happened to be a crepe stand this high up in the French Alps.

On our way down, the mist began to clear.

We had to climb up (and then back down) all these ladders that I found to be a bit scary, but no one else was bothered.

About halfway down, we finally started to see blue sky and glimpses of Mount Blanc.

The clouds were constantly changing so you had to be watching to see all the different peaks.

One minute you could see them, and then the next they would be covered up again.

But when we could see them, they were just gorgeous.

We could even see the village below us.

As usual, I ended up being glad I had followed Taido up the mountain that day.

Everyone ran down the last few miles and then we went to town for ice cream.

I took a couple of vines on our day of climbing: one of goats and one of the mist then blue sky. Gorgeous!

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I’m finding that looking back at my summer walks is a wonderful antidote to dark gray winter days in Aberdeen.

This August day spent wandering the Shire was glorious.

The skies were blue. The heather was in bloom. The kids were happy.

Well, the kids that came were happy. (We left one sullen teenager at home this day.)

These photos are a timely reminder for me that the world will be this bright again.

And with time flying by faster than I can take notes, that day will probably arrive sooner than I think.

Thank goodness for heather covered hills and greener than green fields.

Thank goodness for color. For sunshine. For creaky old legs that can still follow new paths.

I am surprisingly motivated to get outside on a gray day just to be certain that my legs will still work when the days look like this again.

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How can you not want to go somewhere called The Fairy Pools? Right?

The Fairy Pools are essentially just a series of waterfalls and places where the water has gathered along this stream that runs at the foot of The Black Cuillin Mountains.

You can walk for a long time up the stream and every few feet is another little spot to stop and watch the water run over the rocks and through the golden fields that stretch through the valley.

We took our picnic lunch to the Fairy Pools and climbed down to sit near the water.

We had the most amazing weather while we were on the Isle of Skye in October, so we spent every possible minute outside.

We had been warned that the weather can be dreadful, so we were prepared, but we were treated to nonstop gorgeous golden light instead of grey mists.

Skye actually means clouds or mist in Gaelic so we were super fortunate. We hear that usually the Isle of Skye is true to its name and covered in clouds.

But I think these Fairy Pools would be magical in any weather. I would love to see them on a misty day too.

The kids had loads of fun with this walk. Cole and Ben climbed up the stream from down by the water while the rest of us walked the trail along the side. They both ended up wet but there were no complaints.

Our three nights on the Isle of Skye went by way too fast. Hopefully we’ll be back soon!

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The Quiraing was probably our favorite walk on the Isle of Skye.

Located on the northernmost bit of the Trotternish ridge, the Quiraing on a clear day has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

We did the circuit option which is about 7km and from which you get views of the Scottish mainland and the Outer Hebrides.

Autumn (and winter) light in Scotland is golden all day long if the sun is shining. The sun stays low and the shadows long for the whole day.

We tried to stay in the sun as much as possible because it’s chilly in the shadows.

Since we had already walked to The Storr that morning, the afternoon stretched out a little long for our littlest guy especially when we were climbing over the top of the ridge, but he made it up. Then once we were on the other side, he was running down.

You can tell from Mary Polly’s clothes that even though it was a sunny October day by the sea, we were still bundled up.

We met a few sheep along the way, of course.

If you want to go to The Quiraing Isle of Skye, here’s a more detailed description of the walk, including where to park.

Stay tuned because tomorrow are the Fairy Pools!

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