The weekend arrives again after a short week at work; from the tail end of the Christmas/New Year holiday period. Having had snow in recent days, although it had started to melt around the home, I wanted to head over to Glen Affric for the first time since moving up to Scotland - it being one of my favourite locations.

From the house we could see the distant mountains snow laden, so I knew Glen Affric would have some potentially stunning views - if we could make it there with the car through what would be a predictably icy/snowy road up the glen.

After packing the snow shovel, normal shovel and ice axe as precautions to make sure we didn’t get stuck, we headed off. As we made our way up the single track road to the glen the temperature noticeably dropped from the 3-4 degrees C down to 1 degree C and we entered another winter wonderland of snow laden trees.

It was an interesting ‘pocket of cold’ it seemed, as travelling a relatively short distance further along the road the temperature was slightly higher and the snow had already melted off the trees.

We eventually made it to car park at the end of the road, navigating through some compacted icy/snowy road conditions, making sure I kept the car moving to avoid any challenges along the way.

The weather was pretty bleak unfortunately. Even so I headed off up a footpath with the camera bag and tripod, to a viewpoint that looks up the glen. Arriving at the viewpoint it started raining with everything getting wet! First couple of photos had rain all over the lens which I was repeatedly drying and taking photos very quickly trying to avoid further soaking. The mountains were covered in cloud which was a tad disappointing.

However the conditions were changeable and eventually the rain stopped and gaps in the clouds started to create some great atmosphere through the glen as sunlight broke through at different times. Reminding me that in such situations not to be in a rush to come and go when the weather is foreboding.