A Christmas Eve tradition of my family is to go see the reindeer parade in Kingussie. When I was younger I often got to go on the sleigh, of course to my delight. Last year Fiona surprised me and I got the chance to pull the front of the sleigh with Akubra and Poirot. This year I had a feeling it would happen again and it did! However, Fiona did give me a warning in the lorry this time. She is known to surprise you…
As a Christmas present to my family this year, I decided to take them up the hill to see the reindeer. The Centre is closed on Christmas Day but the reindeer in the enclosure still need to get their feed for the day. Fiona said if no one else said they’d do it; I could with my family. After a bit of persuading they agreed, and I took a couple from my family and a few friends up the hill. You can’t get a better Christmas than that! All photos here are taken by either myself, my dad or my brother.
When we got to the enclosure, we had all the reindeer on Cairngorm waiting for us. The girls who were on the free-range were asking for a wee bit of extra food too. We picked up the food for the reindeer in the enclosure and headed up the hill. It was a frosty morning and cold, but it was so beautiful. The sun even came out for a while which was lovely. We were all wrapped up but of course the reindeer were very well insulated with their winter coats. We usually feed the reindeer in the hill enclosure a couple of times a day depending on what time of the year but since we were only feeding them once we had a lot of food to take. Thankfully the team on Christmas Eve took it all up to the bins on the hill so we didn’t have to carry it all the way up.
We wandered around the hill introducing the reindeer and answering questions all about how awesome they are. We also had our friends Lorriane and Massa too and they were just amazed. It’s so nice to show people that you know where you spend a lot of your time and where you just love to be. I’m sadly coming up to my exams so I will be cherishing my time with reindeer, Christmas definitely wrapped it up so nicely.
We then headed over to see the free ranging reindeer and I hadn’t seen any of those guys in such a long time, so it was so nice to see them. I was rusty at identifying them, so I had to get my trusty back up plan of a photo from the board in the office which keeps track of the whole herd.
The girls on the free range haven’t had a chance of hand feeding for quite a while due to them being on the free range for the past year or so. Some exceptions for a couple of the breeding females. They can sometimes be quite wild and excited when they haven’t been around people for a wee while. I turned around to swap bags with my mum as I had an empty sack and she had a full bag of hand feed. As I turned, I saw my mum standing there whimpering. Ryvita, a 14-year-old female with no antlers, had her nose right up against her bag. I hadn’t laughed that hard in a long time. Sadly, no one was quick enough to get a photo or video of the moment of her being scared out of her mind.
For my Dad’s Christmas present, (which he didn’t know at the time as I’m a very last-minute person who left it too late,) was an adoption of Vanilla. You can find out what you get if you were to adopt a reindeer here. We’ve been in the hills together quite a few times and when we’ve come across a few reindeer, she’s usually always there. She’s such a beautiful girl and every time he always gets a good photo of her, so I thought they’d be a good match.
Sadly, not everyone was able to make it on the 25th so I promised to take them up another time. That just happened to be on the 3rd of January. I took my brother and his girlfriend up the hill on a very snowy day. It feels like magic when you’re with the reindeer in the snow, kicking the snow up to get the lichen and deer grass, or them walking in the snow easily while all the humans are falling in streams and falling down snowholes. Although in typical Maisy fashion, I faceplanted off the boardwalk in front of a whole group of visitors.
I sadly had not learnt my lesson and buried my hand feed bag underneath the snow because the reindeer kept pestering me when holding it. I’m not saying any names, but it wasn’t Dr Suess, Cowboy and Tub. I then had a hard time trying to get their big noses out of the bag within all the snow, if you know anything about trying to get a Christmas reindeer nose out of a white bag it’s hard considering their brain is controlled by their stomachs. Which is the same with me, I’ll be honest.
The reindeer look magnificent in the snow when it all just sits on their nose, and of course it doesn’t melt because they are so well insulated that they don’t let the heat out to melt the snow. However, all the humans do not look magnificent and are bumbling around in the snow trying not to fall in a snow-covered burn. Unfortunately, yes, three of us did fall in the same burn at the same time.
They couldn’t get rid of me that quickly. As the next day I came back up to Glenmore the to go up a Meall a’ Bhuachaille with Sanna and Echo the dogs. The best hill in Scotland and some of the best snow I have ever seen up there. So much fun although, so much more energy goes into walking in deep snow especially at some points I was sinking above my hips and the dogs kept vanishing under all the powder.
Maisy