Loch Tay - The Birks O'Aberfeldy

The Birks O'Aberfeldy is a lovely walk which follows the Moness Burn up the steep sided gorge through which it flows. Starting and finishing at a small free car park on the edge of Aberfeldy, the path starts as a gentle stroll but fairly quickly becomes quite a steep trek up zig-zagging steps until finally reaching the top of the gorge where it crosses over a bridge above the spectacular Falls of Moness before returning back down the opposite side of the gorge to the car park.

Robert Burns apparently visited this spot in 1787 and was so inspired that he wrote the poem "The Birks of Aberfeldie". In case you were wondering, "Birks" is an old word for birch which along with oak and beech is one of the main varieties of tree found in the glen.

Near the car park stands a metal sculpture of a stag. It is here that the Melting Mount ~ eye eye cache is located, however it has been missing for a while now and although we went for a look anyway, it was nowhere to be seen.

Moving on we went in search of The Birks Tree Collection. This is another cache which is near the car park and which can be collected easily even if you don't want to tackle the full walk. The name of this cache refers  to the area around the car park which has been planted with a large selection of tree types. Each of these has a small plaque to identify it. This was extremely useful to us as we don't know much about trees. The cache is located at the base of a certain type of tree and once we'd found the example of this type of tree we went off in the direction of the GZ armed with a few samples of its leaves (lifted from the ground). This did the trick and we very quickly found a tree in the correct area which matched the clue.

Following the path up the glen we arrived at a little view point where a bench has been installed. This isn't just any old bench however as it has a sculpture of Robert Burns perched at one end gazing off into the distance. The Robert Burns - Aberfeldy cache is located nearby and was a simple find. After finding this cache we had some fun taking photos to complete one of the Geocaching Challenges and Mr Burns got some kisses from Super Kid, Super Girlie and even Mrs SC.

A bit further on is another area which resembles a bench, however I'm not too sure whether it is man made or natural. It's here that a plaque commemorates Burns writing his poem. The view from this spot isn't great so I would doubt it was here that he actually sat to pen his masterpiece. The Birks of Aberfeldy. - Robert Burns cache is marked as being near this spot however we found the coordinates were pointing at a location a bit further on and ended up having to backtrack to here to look for the cache. The cache itself is hidden in a location which also does not match the clue, however luckily someone has posted a replacement clue which does indeed help finding it.

After a stop for a rest and a bite to eat (by now were were exhausted!), we came to the The Birks - At the Top cache. No prizes for guessing where on the walk it was hidden. This proved to be a simple find after which we went to have a look at the water falls (skipping a further cache which appeared to be somewhere off across some fields). At this point the path crosses to the other side of the gorge but the wooden bridge over which is leads is directly above the top of the falls. This is very impressive but I must admit I was a bit wary about going over it. The kids on the other hand had no such fears.

Coming down the opposite side was a relief, however our legs were beginning to complain a bit. Two more caches awaited us on our descent. The first of these was The Birks - In miniature (themed swaps) which was found by Super Girlie. As it's name suggests this was a themed cache where swap items were to be miniatures, to be honest I have no idea what we swapped from here although I think is was pretty empty. The second and final cache of the day was The Birks - Up the Grassy slope which again is as it's name suggests up a grassy slope, grassy, slippy and muddy.

We finally got back the the car a short while later and were relieve to get our boots off. This is marked as a simple walk, however we found it pretty tough going. I'm not sure however if this was because of the amount of walking we'd been doing over the few days prior which included climbing a munro. That said it's a great walk and well worth the effort... and thankfully being October, there were no midges!