Roaming freely since 1952
Scruffy reindeer month! Not their most photogenic season but a wonderful time of year nonetheless. The cows and calves left the enclosure to free range in the mountains and the males in our enclosure are looking super with lovely velvet antlers.
Ruth
My involvement with the reindeer goes back 30 years when Tilly and Alan were my neighbours and Alex and Fiona where still very wee.
I came up to the Highlands to work at Badaguish Outdoor Centre for people with additional needs before I was due to start a nursing degree . I never left – I fell in love with the mountains, and then a reindeer herder!! And now the reindeer.
My wonderful friendly golden retriever Rosie used to end up at Reindeer House after following any walker passing by my house down at Badaguish. Tilly would phone me and I would often end up there socialising, helping out, then for dinner and end up walking home with Rosie after a wee whisky or two!
I eventually went to university but not to study nursing. I did a Honors Fine Art degree in 2004.
Over the years I have kept in touch with Tilly and the reindeer, volunteering, an extras pair of hands or legs walking out onto the mountains to help herd in the girls for calving or just going up to spy the herd in the summer months on the mountain.
Several years ago, I got a call to work with the team and use my artistic talents for ‘Christmas Fun’ (weekends in December when Santa visits the Paddocks). By this time Fiona was all grown up and coordinating all things Christmas and the herd on Cairngorm along with her mum and the team. Now I am just a regular part-timer in the team.
So, when I am not a reindeer herder you might find me working in my studio at home as an artist, working on some colorful wild abstract paintings. These days I also work on some reindeer crafts, inspired from my trip to Jokkmokk, Sweden in 2020 with fellow reindeer herders Fiona, Joe, and Olly where we stayed with friend Sofia, Mikel Utsi’s great niece. Inspiration for art was everywhere. The snow, visiting herds of reindeer, northern lights, traditional cloths, and traditional food.
That part of Sweden is the capital of Sami culture in Sweden holding the Sami winter festival, which involve reindeer racing, reindeer parades, and all things Sami culture. And I had a wonderful time in the Sami Museum viewing the traditional arts on show. This was very much my inspiration for small reindeer art and crafts for the shop.
Sheena
Manouk popped into Reindeer House a wee while ago and had picked up this book from a charity shop in Aviemore. It is the Forestry Commission guidebook for ‘Glen More Forest Park’ and has no date on it but was published sometime in the 70s. It has a section about the Cairngorm Reindeer. I had a flick through it and thought others might enjoy the prints and information about the reindeer which was written by Dr Ethel Lindgren (who along with Mikel Utsi, reintroduced the reindeer herd in 1952).
Things have changed a lot in the last 50 years or so. You may read that back in the day some of the reindeer born in the Cairngorms were sold elsewhere and some of them even used for meat. You’ll all be pleased to hear that for a long time now, all of the reindeer born in our herd have been able to live out their natural lifespan (roughly 12-14 years) here in the Cairngorms. Nowadays, we keep our numbers at roughly 150 by controlling how many females we run with a bull during the rut and therefore how many calves we hope will be born each spring time. Below is the article, some photos of the reindeer, as well as some beautiful prints of the Cairngorms. Enjoy!
Lotti
In January 2021 we embarked upon a project of a lifetime here at The Cairngorm Reindeer Centre. For many, many years we have operated out of Reindeer House, with a modest shop/reception area and to say the least a cramped office.
Visitors arriving would sometimes come in and say ‘where’s The Cairngorm Reindeer Centre’, slightly incredulous that our place, with such a grand name was so small and homespun. But equally many of our visitors and supporters have loved the way it is and I suspect are slightly worried that any change may be for the worse.
But please be rest assured that the reindeer, the herders and the passion for our unique herd of reindeer will be no less than it already is and our new facility will tick lots of boxes for everyone, whether able or unable to make it out onto the hill to see the free-ranging herd. It will also be a game changer for our dedicated reindeer herders who will be able to work out of a purpose built work place where they can ‘come in from the cold’, dry their clothes and work in a comfortable spacious office with a dedicated area to have a break.
The site for the new building is in our reindeer Paddocks, which is quite a steep bank, so there was an initial dig out to provide a flat surface at the same level as Reindeer House on which to place the foundations. That started in mid February and without a doubt the snowless winter worked in our favour. Since than the foundations have been laid, the concrete floor poured in and then in a flash a very large crane arrived, the site was buzzing with tradesmen and a lorry came with prefabricated panels. The crane lifted the panels on to the site and the internal walls and roof of the building went up in double quick time.
Right from the start, after we received an extremely generous donation from a long term supporter the process of finding an architect, doing a feasibility study, drawing up plans and finally going for planning permission has been seamless. Much credit needs to go to our architect Catriona Hill, from Oberlanders, who has been our guiding light/guardian angel throughout the process. And here we are now more than half way through the construction and a completion date pencilled in for the end of October.
By the middle of May we could really see what space we will have for our shop, exhibition, reception area, toilet, office, plant room and staff room. We are limited for space because we still need as much room as possible for the reindeer Paddocks, but we are extending their range into the wood to provide them with shelter from the hot sun and rain (they of course won’t need shelter from the snow!).
So, when we are all finished and everything is open as normal visitors will arrive and come into the new Centre before making their way through the new exhibition and on to the reindeer out in the Paddocks. With the incredibly successful crowd funding we will be kitting out the inside of the Centre and the Paddocks with all our fascinating facts about reindeer, the history of the herd and the amazing world of reindeer herding. We also intend to have some immersive film of our reindeer in the different seasons. In particular to be able to show visitors, who are unable to walk out onto the mountainside just how friendly and well adapted our reindeer are to their mountain environment.
Tilly