Europe Day Five - Cairngorms Reindeer Center

We got up at 7 on the train and rushed off into the station at Aviemore, Scotland. We had pancakes and jam at a little cafe by the train station before getting on the shuttle bus up the mountains in to the Cairngorms National Park. Inside the park is a Reindeer Center to reintroduce reindeer to Scotland where hunters hunted them out of. It is the perfect place for them with the weather, altitude, mountains and lichen.

The first reindeer in the park were from Switzerland. They brought 8 reindeer over from there every 7 years for the first 21 years and now they have 150 reindeer. We got to go to the reindeer pen where they can track their numbers and track their health to see how there doing.

And don't worry the reindeer in the pen are switched out with the other reindeer from the national park. We were given a ride up the hill to where we hiked about 20 minutes into the area they were at. I was carrying the bag of food to the giant square mile enclosure. Some of them were being kept there as it was rutting season and they are trying to control the numbers.

While we were walking the reindeer followed me and the food. We got to hand feed some of them and pet them. It was amazing!

In an hour we had to go so we hiked back and they gave us a ride back to the visitor center where we had some soup and caught a bus down the mountain back to Aviemore. We caught the train to Inverness and walked through town along the river to the hotel apartment. We ate macaroni and cheese for dinner and got some time to relax before bed.

2 trains

2 buses

Total miles walked: 2 miles