Our 14th National Park is the Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands. It's huge on many levels, from being the largest National Park in the UK (you can fit two Lake Districts into the Cairngorms) to having the tallest mountains in the UK (Ben Nevis at 1,345m). It has dramatic, snowy mountain landscapes, ancient pine forests and peaceful lochs, all of which are teeming with wildlife. We're staying at the Creag-na-Sanais holiday cottage in Laggan. On arrival we spied a hare dashing away from our car and a short distance away we came across two small deer. From comments written by past visitors in the Visitor Book, they are not rare sightings, so I have high hopes for spotting more wildlife around our cottage soon. Being late December, the days are short and we have been out during the daylight hours, so we haven't had much opportunity to look for wildlife yet but I'm sure we will do soon. Top of our list for our time here in the Cairngorms was to visit the reindeer. Once native to the UK, they died out about 800 years ago and were reintroduced in 1952 by Mikel Utsi from Sweden. There are currently about 150 Cairngorm reindeer in the herd and they roam freely on the hills near Aviemore. We paid to do the Hill Trip, which involved hiking 20-30 minutes out to the huge enclosure to meet, stroke and hand feed these lovely, gentle creatures. The experience was relatively expensive (£44 for the family) but I think it was worth it. It's rare to be able to get so close and to feed them. They were lovely and soft, both when eating out of our hands and to stroke, and the walk to the enclosure was pretty - albeit it very, very windy!
This was actually the second time we've done this trip - we came once before, when Eve was three and before Jay was born. It was nice to visit again with both kids and at an age when they can both remember it!
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