Day 5 - Aviemore and Loch An Eilein

Today was a slightly earlier than desired start as I awoken by the dog at 6:30 this morning. It was nice and sunny actually. It's been hard to keep your body clock in sync at the moment as the sky is still quite light even at 11pm when you should be going to bed!

I eventually got up at 8am, and then headed into Aviemore on the brompton at 8:30am. The local cafe we frequented has shut so I was trying to scope a few new places and use my brompton a bit as it's so fun to ride. I went to the number 1 cafe according to trip advisor and it was excellent. I was able to use the cycle ways to get into Aviemore without having to cycle on the road. The cafe also had some bike racks outside, so rather nervously, I locked my bike up outside.

Cake options at Mountain Cafe, you know its a good place when it has a cake menu!

View of mountains from table

Lemon cake and tea

Upstairs the cafe is similar in theme to the other one, with kind of outdoor-sy styling (think climbing gear, pine wood, sledges, etc etc.). Firstly I was in awe of the cake counter which had probably the best selection imaginable.

I was also please, when I was seated, to see they also had fancy loose leaf too also. As I'd already had breakfast, I ordered tea and lemon cake. The slice was a decent size too. I don't mind paying +£3 for cake but I hate it when you don't even get a decent slice.

When I was finished I rode back to the lodge, and everyone was up by this time. We had to wait until 11am for the Sainsburys man to deliver our shopping for the rest of the week.

After a brief lunch, we drove over to a nearby decent sized Loch for a walk around. It's called Loch Eilein and it has an unusual island in the middle the an ancient building on it.

Cottage converted into shop at start of walk

The walk was fairly uneventful, the weather is still very grey, raining off and on. Not good for photography as really not enough light.

Path amongst forest

Stream feeding into Loch

When we got back we had a late lunch, soup, which was very exciting. And then I had a snooze before we went out to get fish and chips for dinner. We finished the evening by playing Jenga.

Jenga