Blairadam Forest, Kelty

As a few of our core group were on holiday this week we decided just to do a short walk, 2.5 miles or so, just to keep things ticking over. The forecast wasn't good but we worthies donned our waterproofs and left the kirk to whispers of "daft"and "crackpots" amongst others. Some couldn't even understand what possessed us to go to Kelty! Whatever did they mean?
Today was the first walk we had done without doing a reconnoiter first, but we were armed with a map of the forest downloaded from the internet. A fine help that turned out to be. There were 3 routes on the map and we opted for the yellow route as it measured 2.5.miles. At the beginning there were sign posts with coloured stripes indicating that we were on the right track, but these were anything but regular as we moved through the conifer woods. The weather was so changeable we had waterproofs on/ off, brollies up/down, sunglasses...mmhh.. some folk just always seem to look glamorous.... and we were down to T-shirts as it was so warm.
The map was passed around everyone and each had a different opinion of which way up to hold it. You've guessed it. We came to crossroads and with each of us still having different opinions we had to admit that we had gone astray. We were just starting to use our Girl Guide training in animal tracks and the flow of a river, when as if by some miracle, a man and his dog appeared walking towards us, obviously recognising by our gestures that we were lost. How fortunate were we? He was on the committee of the Kelty Heritage trails group and actually lived in the forest. He was such a gentleman and asked to walk some of the way with us to ensure we got back on course. John and his lovely dog Kiery told us some background to the forest and the pits which once stood there. Once back to relative safety they left us to continue on our own. Thank you John, for your kindness.
Until then, we had had a real mixture of sunshine and spits of rain, then we heard the rumble in the jungle. With little or no warning the heavens opened and we found ourselves in the middle of a rainstorm. We took shelter under the trees (photo)until it became semi-torrential at which point the prevailing view was to keep moving as were were soaked by then anyway. As we emerged from the rainforest the sun came out again and the skies were blue with fluffy clouds - bizarre. Desperate for a cup of coffee we crossed over to Kathellen where we had lovely drinks, scrumptious cakes and scones and excellent service from pleasant waitresses. Now that was a lovely ending to our walk today, which according to the pedometer was 5.4 miles - more than double what we intended. We didn't actually see any of Kelty though and not a clippie in sight.